I just finished the "Thank You" video yesterday and, while I appreciate your humor (he does say both phrases a lot), I also want to point out what makes him so effective. It's a given that you have to be able to communicate your subject matter, but he's got an obvious enthusiasm for machine learning. And it's contagious - I'm a long way from Linear Algebra and Partial Derivatives (early '80s) but his easy-going style combined with how he presents the material makes it easy to follow along.
Now I just need a project where machine-learning would be an appropriate way of processing data!
I also finished the last of the videos over the weekend. I thought the course was excellent -- just the right amount of detail to get you started, and yes, his enthusiasm for the material is contagious.
Ng's machine learning is the first class on Coursera I actually saw through to completion, and I'm a little sad now that it's over. It reminded me of all of the best classes I took in college, how excited I was about the material and the inevitable letdown when the class ended.
Strange ... I felt the same feeling of sadness and it was only amplified by the last video where he spends half the time thanking us for taking the class.
How do I even express my gratitude?
This was my second Coursera class - I started with Martin Odersky's Introduction to Functional Programming in Scala (which I also highly recommend).
Now I just need a project where machine-learning would be an appropriate way of processing data!