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AoPS intermediate Python


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Has anybody taken this class? Is there a significant jump in difficulty from the introductory course? We found major jump in difficulty between introductory and intermediate math courses. A major one. I am wondering if it’s the same thing with programming.  
FWIW DS found the intro Python course somewhat easy.

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Are you looking for a Credit or are you looking for his education? If it is the later, I have begun Auditing this MOOC course, which is for beginners and IMO the instructor is excellent. The Kindle textbook is available for 99 cents from Amazon and I am going to dive into that, because since I am Auditing, for Free, I don't have access to the exams and some other things that people who pay for the course have access to.. I wish some of the videos were shorter, as in the Georgia Tech course which I plan to take next.

This is from UMichigan:

https://www.edx.org/course/programming-for-everybody-getting-started-with-pyt

 

This course is C.S. oriented and is from Georgia Tech. More hours are required. Also a Beginner course.

https://www.edx.org/course/computing-in-python-i-fundamentals-and-procedural

The information says that the Videos are very short, 2 or 3 minutes, and then there are things to work on, between Videos, and I suspect I am going to do better with the very short Videos.

There are also many other courses available on edx.org and coursera.org that are more demanding but sometimes taking more than one "Beginner" course can be a good path, because one teaches one thing and another teaches something else, or, teaches it in a different, more understandable way.

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Thanks Lanny. We have never managed to successfully work through any MOOC. We start out with good intentions and it always gets pushed on the back burner and the lack of a “real/live” teacher is an issue. 

Edited by Roadrunner
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52 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

Thanks Lanny. We have never managed to successfully work through any MOOC. We start out with good intentions and it always gets pushed on the back burner and the lack of a “real/live” teacher is an issue. My son really enjoys AoPS format. I am trying to gauge the difficulty of the course so I can schedule it appropriately (maybe even wait for the summer if we need to). The intro class has been a minimal time commitment so far as far as AoPS classes are concerned. But we have experienced the other end of their courses as well when he felt defeated and overwhelmed, hence my caution. 

 

You are welcome.  The first MOOC course I took was the best for me, because I had complete access, although I was Auditing, Free. It was from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU.EDU)  and was IMO awesome. That was 3 years ago. I'm not sure but I believe the MOOC courses changed after that and they went into the current system, where if auditing, free, one can't do the exercises online or take the exams. I don't need the Certificates, but I would like to be able to do the exercises online and take the exams online.

I am looking for myself also. This is a web page on Python.org (which is the home of Python) about Beginner Tutorials, which I am going to read now:  https://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide

Most of the MOOC courses one can start any day, but others begin on specific dates and are Instructor led, as was the case with the  MOOC course I took from ERAU several years ago. Start date and end date were fixed although the course otherwise was Asynchronous.

I hope he will enjoy whatever course he decides on and that it will be worth the money. Good luck to him!

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DS took the two classes back-to-back 3 years ago, so they might have changed.  But he said that there is NOT a big step up.  The final project can also be done at a lower or higher level -- making a checkers game I think.  He said there was some complexity to that project, but he enjoyed it. 

Also, his python skills are on par with kids who have taken a programming course at MIT. And with this foundation, he has been able to teach himself machine learning at a high enough level to be currently analyzing CERN data. This tells me that the AoPS intermediate course is well designed. 

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22 minutes ago, square_25 said:

That tells me that your son is extremely bright ;-). 

Seriously, though, we shouldn't evaluate classes on how very self-motivated kids do with them. I know lots of math very well, and it says nothing about my high school. 


Should I read your comment to mean the step up is significant? I am just trying to figure out the time commitment, which tends to rise with difficulty. Intro class has been fairly easy here. 

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On 6/21/2020 at 1:00 PM, Roadrunner said:

 I am trying to gauge the difficulty of the course so I can schedule it appropriately (maybe even wait for the summer if we need to). The intro class has been a minimal time commitment so far as far as AoPS classes are concerned. 

DS15 did it back to back in summer a few years ago, the summer before 7th grade. He wasn’t doing it for a grade though so it was hyper low key enrichment class for him. 

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16 hours ago, Arcadia said:

DS15 did it back to back in summer a few years ago, the summer before 7th grade. He wasn’t doing it for a grade though so it was hyper low key enrichment class for him. 


can you ask him if he found the Intermediate level much more challenging?

 

Edited by Roadrunner
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24 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

can you ask him if he found the Intermediate level much more challenging? 

He spent more time on both intro and intermediate python classes because he had nothing better to do. He was just spending time making his code run more efficient. So time to complete the assignments wasn’t much. Time to make it “perfect” was much more. That was the summer before 7th grade so we didn’t really need to worry about time commitment when online classes started back up in August.

The only programming classes that DS15 is taking for credit is the Edhesive AP Computer Science A class (ETA: as in using the AP exam score for high school credit) and his dual enrollment classes. He didn’t use any of the AoPS math classes for credit either.

Edited by Arcadia
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16 hours ago, Arcadia said:

He spent more time on both intro and intermediate python classes because he had nothing better to do. He was just spending time making his code run more efficient. So time to complete the assignments wasn’t much. Time to make it “perfect” was much more. That was the summer before 7th grade so we didn’t really need to worry about time commitment when online classes started back up in August.

The only programming classes that DS15 is taking for credit is the Edhesive AP Computer Science A class and his dual enrollment classes. He didn’t use any of the AoPS math classes for credit either.


thank you. I will take this as “it’s a continuation and not a jump.”

Edited by Roadrunner
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