Best Coursera Yet

I finished my third Coursera course tonight: Data Analysis, eight weeks of learning R and its application to statistics problems. I've enjoyed all three, but this one topped them all. It was a difficult eight weeks. I spent a lot of hours at night after work and weekend time poring over assignments. It's been tiring but worth it. I've remembered the statistics I'd forgotten, learned a lot of new things like generalized linear models, and deepened my knowledge of R. It's exactly what I set out to accomplish when I started taking on-line classes a year ago at this time. I wanted to see if I could adapt to a new style of learning and self-education. I wanted to prove that I could still absorb challenging material. I'm at an age when it's easy to sit back and tell yourself that you already know it all, that you're too old a dog to learn new tricks. Did I still have it in me? I think I succeeded on all counts.

The professor was Jeff Leek, who's on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins biostatistics department. They claim to be pre-eminent in the world, and after sitting through this course I believe them. His graduate students are fortunate.

I've earned certificates with distinction for the two other classes I've taken. I calculated my point totals for quizzes and assignments for 'Data Analysis'. I think I squeezed out another distinguished certificate. I'll have to wait a week or two to see if my numbers match those from Coursera, but I'm confident that it'll turn out well.

I've got a lot of other tasks lined up. I want to take more of these classes next year, but I'm uncertain about what to take. I want to go further with R and statistics, but there's no clear choice listed in the catalog. I might start haunting Kaggle.com and applying these new skills to problems. I've got some development tasks to get back to.

I found out that I'm two speeches away from achieving the Toastmasters Advanced Leadership Bronze designation. I'll fulfill those easily in the next few weeks. That would be three awards in one fiscal year. I'll only have ten speeches to achieve Advanced Communicator Gold and the Advanced Leadership Silver to become a Distinguished Toastmaster. Who would have thought it'd culminate in this when I started in 2008? Maybe I can do it by mid 2015.

I plan to relax a bit over the holidays. It's been a nice way to end the year.