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Welcome to Spring Semester 2013
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A&F(RecStay)FIX
Networks: Friends, Money, and Bytes
Mung Chiang
A course driven by 20 practical questions about wireless, web, and the Internet, about how products from companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Ericsson, HP, Skype and AT&T work.
Announcements
HW2 Solutions and HW3
Hi everyone,
The standard solutions for HW2 have been posted. Please use these to grade yourselves, and then report your results with the corresponding HW2 survey.
Additionally, we have posted HW3, which covers Q4 and Q5. Again, the standard solutions for this will be posted in one weeks time.
Thu 4 Oct 2012 6:30:00 AM PDT
Reporting your homework scores
Hi everyone,
Just to avoid any confusion, we should clarify how you are going to report your homework scores.
For each assignment in the Homework tab, there will be three links: One for the problems, one for the solutions (posted one week later), and one to a survey that allows you to report your scores (also posted one week later).
Once you have compared the standard solutions with your answers, you can complete the survey, which asks you how you did on each individual question. You will see four choices per question:
1. Didn't even attempt.
2. Completely wrong.
3. Somewhat right.
4. Mostly or completely right.
Choose the one that best fits your performance.
Again, since Princeton doesn't issue certificates, there's no need to lie: This is strictly for our own information.
Thank you for your cooperation!
Wed 26 Sep 2012 7:35:00 PM PDT
HW and Network20q site
Hi everyone,
We have posted the following under the Homework tab:
1. The standard solution for Homework 1, as well as the self-grade reporting survey.
2. Homework 2, which covers Q2 and Q3. The standard solutions for this will be posted next Wednesday, Oct 3.
Additionally, you can now login to the network20q website using your Coursera credentials! To do so, follow this link:
network20q.ee.princeton.edu/coursera/
You will be asked to supply your Coursera login information, and then to specify which username and password you would like to use for the network20q site. After this, you will have access to the following features on network20q.com (available on the sidebar):
1. Blog: Use this to post current events, news, or other information pertinent to the class.
2. Wiki: Use this to post textbook-quality responses and/or information. We have included examples to seed discussion for Q1. You can add to/edit any of the pages as you feel fit. And as we progress, feel free to add pages for the remaining lectures!
Please note that anything that does not constitute a Blog or a Wiki, i.e., questions about the lecture, pointing out errors in the videos, etc., should still be posted here on Coursera.
Wed 26 Sep 2012 3:00:00 PM PDT
HW, Facebook, and Survey
Hi everyone,
This announcement will consist of three parts.
Assignments
We will be posting two things tomorrow:
1. Homework 2, which will cover material in Q2 and Q3.
2. The standard solution for Homework 1.
Please self-grade the first assignment using the solutions, and report your results in the survey that will be accessible from the homework page. Since Princeton does not issue certificates on coursera at this point, there's no passing or failing at stake: Accurate reporting will only serve to help us.
That being said, it's still OK to do the assignment after we have posted the solution: Just do not look at the answers until you have finished.
Facebook groups
Please feel free to begin creating your own Facebook study groups amongst yourselves. Let us know how they go!
Demographics survey
Please remember to take the demographics survey which you can access from the left toolbar. It will only take a few minutes at most. Again, this will have no bearing on your performance in the class: It's strictly for our own information.
Tue 25 Sep 2012 1:50:00 PM PDT
Helping with Subtitles
Hi Everyone,
First of all, thanks for making us aware of the subtitle errors for the Q1 lectures. We have submitted them for re-captioning: These will hopefully be available within a few days.
Second, some of you have graciously volunteered to help out with creating subtitles in other languages. We have added a link to the left sidebar that gives detailed instructions on how you can do this! The coursera team, and more importantly many of your classmates, will greatly appreciate your efforts.
Thanks, and enjoy!
Thu 20 Sep 2012 9:48:00 AM PDT
Assignment 1
Hi everyone,
The first assignment, covering material in Q1, has been posted under the "Homework" section. We will provide the standard solutions for you to self-grade, and report, in a week.
Good luck! Let us know if there are any questions.
Wed 19 Sep 2012 10:38:00 AM PDT
Lecture Slides
Hi Everyone in Networks FMB!
We received some requests to provide the lecture slides as a suppliment the videos. We have done so, and you can find them under the "Lecture Slides" tab that we added to the left panel.
Enjoy!
Tue 18 Sep 2012 8:11:00 PM PDT
Course launch
Hi Everyone in Networks FMB: Welcome to the launch of our course! After a week of pre-launch communication (they're all copied below for reference), we're finally starting the course on Sept. 17, 2012.
Check out the course schedule. (we upload video one week ahead of the corresponding lectures at Princeton University)
Check out the lecture videos (with multiple choice quiz question at the end of each video module).
And on Wed we'll put Homework 1 there. (we provide solutions for you to check yourself one week later)
Start discussion threads on the Forum. (and remember to tag each thread at least with a number indicating the video module you're referring to, using "Video 1a", "Video 18d" etc.)
But the first thing we need you to do is to fill out the demographic survey. There's a tab for that right below the Homework and Grand Challenge Homework. The survey is in multiple choice format, and we only ask for coarse-granular information. The sole use of the survey is to understand the composition of almost 40000 of you, and to help us tailor our teaching style more effectively.
Enjoy.
Sun 16 Sep 2012 9:01:00 PM PDT
Flip classroom
You might be wondering: So what's Princeton University's own course looking like now? The lectures are in video, so does it still make sense to repeat the same lecture in the classroom? While that'll save me a lot of time to focus on my research lab, it probably isn't the right way to go forward.
That's why I'm flipping the classroom. If you haven't seen Khan Academy and the TED talk by Khan, you should check those out. Inspiring. Khan was mostly talking about elementary school to high school, but the same principle applies to college even better: Students watch the lectures before coming to the classroom, and then in the classroom they and the their teacher ask each other questions.
Flipping a classroom does not diminish classroom time, it enhances it. One-way open-loop lecturing into a hall filled with facebook-checking students: how is that a good use of classroom time? Let's leave one-way lecturing to YouTube, and save classroom time for interactions.
So, in ELE/COS 381 (the code for this course at Princeton University), we ask all Princeton students to watch lecture videos before coming to each class session. Then in class we
1. Debate and discuss
2. Demo and experiment
3. Guest lecture
We'll record some of the demos and guest lectures (by 20 outstanding guest lecturers from industry, academia, government), subject to their consent, and share with you too.
Now this means a whole lot of additional teaching load to a professor (and I have to keep persuading myself that I'm not spending excessive amount of time on teaching innovations), but it's going to make engineering classroom much more meaningful to the students.
You know these emails are long. So let's keep going.
We asked "what SHOULD a classroom be like?" Now how about the question "what IS open online education?" Some factors are obvious:
1. Course material access (lecture video, slides, quizzes..., by the way, the videos will be captioned on coursera)
2. Social learning environment (this is the only way it can scale up, each new student is also a new potential mini-TA)
3. Assessment (quizzes, homeworks, exams...)
Now, "learning" and "certification" are two distinct concepts. At this point, Princeton is trying out open online education's "learning" part, but not the "certification" part. I'm using GCH and Kudos to provide incentives, but they are not certificates. Please still do the homeworks and check against the standard solutions that we'll provide. We trust you to self-report your scores (more on this on Wed) so that we can better understand how to personalize education and adjust our teaching style. There's no reason not to tell us the true scores, since there's no pass/fail/certificate at stake anyway.
(This whole certification thing is actually a big debate point in this movement: the consistency, authenticity, privacy, and profit-seeking issues associated with certification. And you may have heard that some of these platforms are partnering with Pearson to provide real certification exams, but you got to pay to take those exams.)
4. Interaction with teaching staff (e.g., the TAs and myself are pouring a lot of time every day and night into this course, although we may not be able to reply to every email/tweet/FB upate/forum threads). Maybe virtual, maybe in-person meetup (check out www.facebook.com/mung.chiang.5 under Events or Groups, and you should be able to sign up directly).
So when we "start" tomorrow, it's actually interesting to reflect on what "start" means for an online education experience. Nor is it always clear what the "end" of a course means. The videos, homework, social learning environment will all be there, more like on-demand movies than channelized TV.
In terms of platforms, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter are already open for this course. Starting tomorrow (clock is set by US east coast time), coursera video/forum and network20q wiki/blog will also be open.
Of course having a schedule and some deadlines help move things along. And for this semester, we synchronize the schedule with the Princeton University offering of the course. For example, teaching staff will focus on Lecture 0 and 1 this week on the coursera forum.
That's it for this email. And for all the pre-launch announcements.
We have been shooting you one email every day this past week, leading up to the Sept. 17 "launch". That's tomorrow.
Mung Chiang (chiang.coursera@gmail.com)
and Network FMB Teaching Staff at Princeton
(Follow us on Twitter @network20q too!)
Sat 15 Sep 2012 9:01:00 PM PDT
Kudos List
We're overwhelmed by the encouragement and thoughts many of you left on our facebook wall: www.facebook.com/mung.chiang.5
We've also created about 10 local study groups. They're open groups on FB, so you can just join. These include Washington DC, Boston, Bay Area, Seattle, Dallas, Cologne Germany, Seoul Korea, Toronto Canada, Vancouver Canada and Mumbai India.
I'll be traveling (for conferences and meetings) to many of these places in the next few weeks. In each case, we've created a "Meetup with Mung" event, usually 9pm at a hotel lobby, for me to hear your questions, ideas, etc about the course, and later in the semester to look at your GCH solutions. Here's an almost-Groupon-style protocol: if there're 5 or more local members signed up for an event (by 5pm the day before the event), we'll host that event. Otherwise, we won't (and wait for the next opportunity).
So please check out these study groups and the events mentioned today.
(Of course feel free to organize study groups without meeting me, which by the way will make your own meetup a lot more pleasant.)
You might feel like being overwhelmed at times too. Just remember:
1. I didn't know how to answer half of these 20 questions about our networks two years ago (and I still don't quite know in several cases). What matters most is not how much you cover in a course, but how much you uncover.
2. You may have a full time job, part time jobs, kids to take care, "normal" courses to take at your college or high school... Don't worry if you have to "slack" a little. The beauty of YouTube is that you can watch it later. And the questions you have may be already answered by follow classmates on coursera or network20q when you log in over the weekend.
3. Your backgrounds vary a lot. Really a lot. We can't target each individual perfectly. But look at it this way: there's no pressure of passing or failing this course, it's all about learning something. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. Maybe just watch first two modules of each lecture, maybe go all the way to finish a GCH and get a new job. These are all good. There's no right or wrong answer when it comes to how you want to learn in this course.
Alright, so what's the subject of this announcement?
While there's no signed certification (which by the way brings out interesting issue of how to authenticate student activities if certification is issued, unless you pay for proctored exams like through ETS or Pearson), we will have a virtual pat on the back, what we call:
Kudos List
Kudos stands for 'glory' or 'recognition' here. It's a like a badge. When we see someone doing really well in forum/wiki/blog or participates a lot in some experiments we'll run later in the course, we'll announce that name (and city of residence) with a big round of virtual applause on
Twitter (we have 2000 followers now, still growing fast)
Facebook (we have 2500 friends/subscribers now, also growing fast)
Email
network20q website's permanent Kudos List
You can't turn this into bread or gold, but it'll visualize a sense of accomplishment.
That's it for this email.
We'll be shooting you one email every day this whole week, leading up to the Sept. 17 launch. Each day we'll talk about a feature of the course. Today's about course Kudos List. You'll see another feature in tomorrow's announcement.
Talk to you then.
Mung Chiang (chiang.coursera@gmail.com)
and Network FMB Teaching Staff at Princeton
(Follow us on Twitter @network20q too!)
Fri 14 Sep 2012 9:01:00 PM PDT
New website features
This email contains two main parts.
Part 1: Clarifications.
We were overwhelmed by the interest in the textbook. Apparently so did Amazon and Cambridge University Press. So now they're running out of stock (on the same day they receive the stock). They had stock for next day shipping in the afternoon yesterday, by early evening it became a 1 week wait. Then even longer into the night.
For this reason, and for those of you outside of US, you need e-book/kindle option.
So here's what I'll do:
A. I'll press the publisher to issue e-book version soon, maybe end of next week.
B. I think Amazon runs an algorithm to decide when it makes sense for them to make a textbook into kindle version. More orders of the hardcopy, faster kindle version comes out. So we're on our way there. But I don't get to control Amazon's secret formula. (We'll actually reverse engineer Amazon's ranking formula in Lecture 5).
C. In the meantime, to bridge the gap, I'll ask the publisher so that I can email all of you the first several chapters directly on Mon.
But let me emphasize again: this textbook is optional. It is not required. You do not have to buy it. The lectures and homeworks will be self-contained. Coursera courses are free. But courses also have optional textbooks.
Furthermore, you'll see Advanced Material as Section 4 of all the 20 Chapters. We will not cover those sections in lectures. Those are beyond typical undergrad level.
Changing topic: to avoid too many websites, I am not using Google+ or LinkedIn.
Finally, on the lecture videos: they come in 5-6 modules each lecture. First 1-2 modules are easy to follow. Later ones may need you to rewind and relisten and re-digest. A key advantage of YouTube lectures is that you can rewind to suit your needs. This course is a serious technical course. So you should expect some parts of each lecture to be non-trivial, and one-pass listening may not be sufficient. But then again, no pain (like listening to me), no gain. The more you put in this course, the more you get out. But you can also choose to put in a little time, and get the little but still positive benefit out. That's of course up to you.
Part 2: The feature of the day today is our course website:
http://scenic.princeton.edu/network20q/
It'll be open next Mon. You can log in using coursera username and password.
You already have coursera for Discussion Forum and Homework. So what's this website for? Well, it's for "archival" quality blogs and wikis:
A. Blogs: if you have time and insight to write up really thoughtful blogs, you can do it here. Anyone in the world can read and comment. (but only coursera students can write).
B. Wikis: remember the crowd-sourced book I mentioned in yesterday's email? That'll come out of this Wiki. This is for really structured and high quality content. Think of writing a textbook section.
I know there's a lot of media out there we're using. So here's a summary:
If you want to watch lecture videos: go YouTube or Coursera.
If you want to do homework and ask/answer specific points in lecture/homework: go Coursera forum.
If you want to write book/blogs with archival quality: go course website http://scenic.princeton.edu/network20q/
If you want to chat about your feelings in taking the course and form study groups: go Facebook.
If you want to hear long winded announcements like this one: check emails.
If you want to get short sound bites: follow us on twitter.
We call this: "NEUFaCT" of communication in this course:
Network20Q Email Utube Facebook Coursera Twitter
That's it for this email.
We'll be shooting you one email every day this whole week, leading up to the Sept. 17 launch. Each day we'll talk about a feature of the course. Today's about course website. You'll see another feature in tomorrow's announcement.
Talk to you then.
Mung Chiang (chiang.coursera@gmail.com)
and Network FMB Teaching Staff at Princeton
(Follow us on Twitter @network20q too!)
Thu 13 Sep 2012 9:01:00 PM PDT
Textbook released
The textbook for this course is not written by my favorite author:
http://www.amazon.com/Networked-Life-20-Questions-Answers/dp/1107024943/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347542947&sr=8-1&keywords=networked+life
or
http://tinyurl.com/8vvq3sq
But the publisher Cambridge University Press did a great job in production quality. And it is written exactly along the lines of this course's structure: 20 Chapters, each chapter covering 1 of these 20 Questions. Each chapter follows the same arrangement: it starts with a "Short Answer" with no math at all, then a "Long Answer" with some math, then numerical "Examples", then "Advanced Material" for those who want to see more technical content.
The textbook is not mandatory. But you may find it helpful as a complement to the video lectures.
Amazon starts shipping tomorrow (the book was printed two weeks ago), $45 (and then I think Amazon sends a $5 credit to textbook buyers). Order today and it'll be delivered early to mid next week, right at the time of Lecture 1.
Now, you're going to write the companion textbook together! How? Tomorrow we'll introduce the feature of archival quality Wiki for this course. And we'll crowd-source the writing of a book about these 20 Questions based on the Wiki entries over this semester. It'll be a book by the students and for the students. It's never done at such a scale. It'll be the first of its kind. And you may become a contributor to it.
That's it for this email.
We'll be shooting you one email every day this whole week, leading up to the Sept. 17 launch. Each day we'll talk about a feature of the course. Today's about the textbook. You'll see another feature in tomorrow's announcement.
Talk to you then.
Mung Chiang (chiang.coursera@gmail.com)
and Network FMB Teaching Staff at Princeton
(Follow us on Twitter @network20q too!)
Wed 12 Sep 2012 9:01:00 PM PDT
GCH and IIP
Today's announcement is on a brand new feature I'm creating for Networks FMB:
Grand Challenge Homework: We'll throw in about 10 GCHs throughout the semester, each is an open-ended, important, and challenging project statement. Might be proving a theorem, might be creating a design, might be writing a piece of code, all about some of these 20 Questions. Associated with GCHs is
Investor and Industry Partners: In this IIP pilot program, I've talked to about 5 venture capital firms and 5 networking companies that are on the frontier of network technology innovation, and they've agreed to work with me on defining GCHs and then (after I skype the semi-finalists) talk to the finalists about their solutions to GCHs. They may fly in the finalists for an interview. This may lead to a new job, a new product, or a new company.
Here're the VCs (two in Silicon Valley, two on East Coast) in IIP with this course:
Artiman Ventures,
Hudson Ventures,
Osage Partners,
USVP.
And companies:
ASSIA Inc. (startup founded by John Cioffi, the father of DSL),
Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs,
AppliedCommunication Sciences (part of the former Telcordia/Bellcore),
HP Labs,
Qualcomm.
A couple of more soon to be confirmed.
Think of it this way: you have access to education material now, with GCH and IIP you'll have access to career-changing opportunities.
But this is also demanding (and entirely optional): I don't expect more than 100 serious GCH submissions, or more than 20 semi-finalists. But if you're interested and you pour yourself into it, you'll find it very rewarding.
Now what about the other 37900 students enrolled in the course who do well, write great blogs, help others with questions, etc? We'll soon announce a virtual reward system geared towards them.
That's it for this email.
We'll be shooting you one email every day this whole week, leading up to the Sept. 17 launch. Each day we'll talk about a feature of the course. Today's about GCH/IIP. You'll see another feature in tomorrow's announcement.
Talk to you then.
Mung Chiang (chiang.coursera@gmail.com)
and Network FMB Teaching Staff at Princeton
(Follow us on Twitter @network20q too!)
Tue 11 Sep 2012 9:01:00 PM PDT
We're on facebook
There're two main parts of this email.
First Part: Announcement 2:
We're on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/mung.chiang.5
Or you can search for "network20q@gmail.com" or for "Mung Chiang" (but pick the one that's for this course, rather than the instructor's personal account).
Friend us (we'll accept all requests) or Subscribe to us (we opened subscriber mode).
We'll use Facebook for two things:
1. Post and share lighter moments in the course (for homework/lecture help, coursera forum is the way to go). Prior experience suggests that people talk about the course in different ways on Facebook than on a course forum.
2. Organize local study groups through Facebook group/events. As Mung (the instructor) goes on business trips, he'll also try to schedule in-person meetings with local groups when the travel schedule allows, to hear directly from you on thoughts about the course content and the learning experience.
So we'll create Open Groups on Facebook, starting tonight with a Washington DC group and a Boston group, as Mung will be available to meet on Sept. 20 evening in Washington DC and on Sept. 24 in Boston (assuming there's a reasonable number of you in those cities who are interested and available to meet up). You can join those groups and indicate availability for the event starting tonight.
Second Part: Clarifications (based on your feedback):
A. Certificate: Princeton University's general policy on coursera as of now is that it will not sign certificates. We will want to see how you do in quizzes and homeworks and exams that will be provided on coursera. And we will have two alternative mechanisms to reward the excellent students in the course: Grand Challenge Homework and Kudos. More on these in later emails this week.
B. Prerequisite: If you want to understand 100% of all the lecture modules, you'll need linear algebra and multivariable calculus. If you're OK with skipping the parts of the modules (usually module D or E in each lecture) that assume these tools, you'll still get about 80% of the course material (and coherence across lectures) without these prerequisites. In May 2013, we'll have a version of the course that only uses additions and multiplications and nothing more.
C. YouTube video volume: Earphone or speaker should work well. We'll adjust the volume soon too.
That's it for this email.
We'll be shooting you one email every day this whole week, leading up to the Sept. 17 launch. Each day we'll talk about a feature of the course. Today's about Facebook groups. You'll see another feature in tomorrow's announcement.
Talk to you then.
Mung Chiang (chiang.coursera@gmail.com)
and Network FMB Teaching Staff at Princeton
(Follow us on Twitter @network20q too!)
Mon 10 Sep 2012 9:01:00 PM PDT
Welcome!
Welcome to Networks FMB!
While coursera website for the course will formally launch on Sept. 17 (the day this course starts at Princeton University), we got a week of preview starting today.
Check out the videos on our YouTube Channel (5 modules labeled A to E for lecture 0 the introduction, and 6 modules for lecture 1):
http://www.youtube.com/user/Network20Q/videos?sort=da&flow=grid&view=0
These two lectures will be our Sept. 17 lecture and Sept. 19 lecture, respectively. You know this whole course is structured around 20 Questions about networks in your life, and each Lectures 1-20 is on one question.
While linear algebra and multivariable calculus are prerequisites if you want to understand 100% of the course material, you will see that in all lectures anyone can appreciate the first modules of each lecture video, and perhaps 80% of the last couple of modules too. So, you can just fast forward the more mathematical part if you want, and move on to the next lecture without losing the gist or coherence of the course.
Going forward, we'll always release videos one week ahead of the actual lectures at Princeton (and the most intensive period of coursera forum discussions associated with those lectures).
And we'll have these videos available on coursera and on YouTube (many of you have smartphones or tablets with a YouTube app, you can search for "Network20Q", and be directed to our Channel). So hit "Subscribe" button on YouTube to subscribe to our Channel, and hit the "Like" button too!
Speaking of schedules, homeworks will be released on Wed of each week, and solution provided one week later. We synchronize with Princeton University calendar, so there's a Fall break during the last week of Oct. Plus Nov. 21 is the Wed before Thanksgiving in US, and no class on that day. The last lecture will be on Dec. 5.
We'll be shooting you one email every day this whole week, leading up to the Sept. 17 launch. Each day we'll talk about a feature of the course. Today's about the YouTube videos. You'll see another feature in tomorrow's announcement.
Talk to you then.
Mung Chiang (chiang.coursera@gmail.com)
and Network FMB Teaching Staff at Princeton
(Follow us on Twitter @network20q too!)
Sun 9 Sep 2012 9:01:00 PM PDT
This course is supported by the Class of 1972 Teaching Initiative at Princeton University.
Sat 8 Sep 2012 9:01:00 PM PDT