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Interactive course about “everyday” data science (tigyog.app)
153 points by andrewnc on July 16, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 52 comments
Last year, I wrote the book Everyday Data Science. It was #1 on HN! [1]

This year, I've been working with Jim Fisher on a new kind of interactive course. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure, except you'll learn Thompson sampling, differential equations, and Bayesian-optimal pricing.

After several months, the first two chapters are ready! Every word, button, and sound has been painstakingly crafted. Try out the first chapter to see what we mean! [2]

The course will be $99, but it’s $29 today, as a thanks for helping us build the next 8 chapters! Let us know what you think :-)

- Andrew Carr [3]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26253281 [2]: https://tigyog.app/d/L:X07z8laLyz/r/when-life-gives-you-lemo... [3]: https://twitter.com/andrew_n_carr



This is not intended as a criticism and, as an experienced data scientist, I'm probably not the target audience anyway. But just... how this hits me. There is a LOT of visual "decoration" and sales-y, pitchy stuff here that makes my eyes/brain glaze over from too much emotional stimulation. Maybe it has the opposite effect for others.


Hi! What are the main things you'd remove? E.g. maybe we've gone too heavy with the illustrations, or sounds?


Just want to put my two cents in and say I love the format. I think it definitely appeals more to younger folks with all the emojis and cartoonish styles (like myself, early twenties).

But the interactive prompts are great. They really get you to engage with the content. The humorous tone strikes a good balance and doesn’t get distracting as well.

I’ll probably buy the course once more chapters are released.


Thanks, such positive comments give me strength to continue! (I recognize though that I may have gone overboard with silly styles in some places ...)

The next chapter should be out next month - stay tuned! (Which reminds me, we should probably have a "subscribe for updates" button, without having to buy it first ...)


...everything from the emojis on up? I think it's just not my vibe. But I'm sure you've done it this way because it works for a lot of other people.


It sure as hell doesn't work on me. The kind of glib emoji-packed sales-slash-emotional priming spiel totally rubs me the wrong way.

Everything here screams "we're sales people first, content people second" and that's not worth my time. I'll choose quiet confidence over showmanship.


no, your feeling is valid, you speak for the rest of us who are so turned off we dont even bother to tell him


I've been a long time fan of your content! Thanks all for these criticisms, we'll definitely take them to heart.


Everyday Data Science is the first course on TigYog [1], a platform I'm building. Most courses are video-based, but TigYog courses are more like books. The only addition is multiple-choice buttons with responses. This lets you simulate the tight feedback loop you’d have with a private tutor.

Andrew's writing shows off what you can make with this medium. It's a bit like blogging. Try it out and let me know how it goes! (Currently it’s a WYSIWYG editor, though I’m also working on a Markdown+git interface. Let me know if you’re interested.)

- Jim Fisher [2]

P.S.: Thanks to one user reporting an Apple Pay UI glitch. I'm on it! In the meantime, ordinary Stripe card payment should work.

[1]: https://tigyog.app/ [2]: https://jameshfisher.com/


> [1]: https://tigyog.app/ [2]: https://jameshfisher.com/

I like your style!


First chapter was quite fun. I actually would have bought the course, but do not own a credit card. This is quite common outside of the US, if you could add PayPal it would be substantially more accessible.


Thanks! :-) That's a great point, I'll look at adding PayPal. (In the meantime, anyone in this situation: send me an email and I'll can sort something out for you! - [email protected])


When places say "credit card", they really mean credit card or debit card. Either works.


No, debit cards in most of the world do not function for remote transactions, even if they have a Mastercard or visa logo. My bank's cards for instance are Mastercard's "Maestro" product which is in-person and debit only, and has alternative infrastructure for online payments.


Which parts of the world are these? I’ve used debit cards issued by various European and US banks for online payments all over the world since the ‘90s.


What part of the world is "most of" it in this case? Where I live, Maestro and the like are considered children's cards for the reasons you mention, and real debit cards work just fine for online transactions.


meta question:

Expecting this post is an "A/B Testing"

Q: Which group am I actually in now? Is this group "A" or "B" ?

:-)


Haha!! Excellent question. So this is our fourth round of testing messages. We didn't want to A/B on HN cause that kinda feels disingenuous! But we've definitely been crunching things like conversion rates.

(Edit: this comment is a stupid meta-meta-joke, please ignore :-)


Was “Excellent” or “Great” group A?

Exit: oh… that was the joke. I thought I was clever


Yes, one of those was group A


Ha!! Great question, so this is our fourth round of message testing. We didn't want to A/B directly on HN cause that feels kinda disingenuous, but we've definitely been crunching conversion rates and such.


I just spent half an hour in an airport reading the first chapter. With only a bit of knowledge of Bernoulli distributions, I found it very informative and well written, moving forward at a nice pace. The tiny tests made me reread a few things I had glossed over initially, forcing me to understand it a little better. Good job.

It would be cool if you provided links to further reading on the various concepts, for extracurricular studies.

Overall the style and ethos feels similar to Pluto.jl, which I think puts you in good company :)

Bonus points for working almost flawlessly on mobile (the table with 0’s and 1’s overflowed and was pushed offscreen.)


Thank you! I thought "I've never heard of Pluto.jl", but then realized I've seen it a lot in that course by Grant Sanderson! At some point TigYog will have interactivity like that :)

Good spot on the table. I'll edit the example to fit, and make math blocks scroll more nicely if they overflow.


I actually bought your book on Amazon and the book I received was insanely disappointing. Full of typo’s, super wonky formatting, super short in depth and content, and the paper book was the lowest quality of any I’ve ever received from Amazon.

I didn’t leave a review because There weren’t many and I didn’t want to sour your sales with a 1-star, but I now kind of regret that.

The course looks cool, but it honestly just feels like a monetizing attempt on something that really didn’t deserve much money to begin with.


Thanks for the feedback, I was hoping the course would be something of a redemption.

I self published the book to prove I could do something like that. It got much more traction than I had planned and, in hindsight, I wish I had paid for editing and formatting as a minimum.

As for the quality of the paperback, that was unfortunately out of my control as I used Amazon's print on demand services. Definitely a painful lesson for me.

In any case, I appreciate this comment and others here. I'm definitely working towards much higher substance with increased polish. :)


Hi! I wonder whether we could win you back with the course? We've reworked so much of the content, I hope you'd find those problems are gone! (Although the course is not on higher quality paper)


To be honest I’m just bot willing to spend money on another product of yours.

This especially if it’s a rehash of the same material (which maybe you missed in my previous comment, but I didn’t find to be high-quality).


Considering the OP’s complaint pointed to a lack of effort and polish, this response doesn’t really build trust in the product.


No real opinion but fwiw

>(Although the course is not on higher quality paper)

Is a joke, because this course isn't a book at all.


I didn't want to make an empty comment, but simply - thanks!


Interesting course. I'm not sure if you're affiliated with tigyog.app owners or not, but 20% commission on paid courses is too much. The platform looks neat and interesting, but I wouldn't pay 20% of whatever I'm charging for a course to be able to use a platform that self describes as a "blog with buttons".


Hi! I'm the solo developer of TigYog.app. I've been working with Andrew to build out the course. What percentage would you consider appropriate? It's set at 20% essentially because I have rent and bills to pay :-)


(not the person you're responding to) If you're offering free, perpetual hosting, I think it's worth 20% of sales for the creator (who doesn't know if they're even going to sell much, or if the material will become outdated and stop selling in a few years)

I wondered how the creator of this course could guarantee the course would be available forever, and what a headache it must be to continue to maintain the hosting/content if sales taper off. Outsourcing that job to a service which is hosting many such courses (and with new ones continually added) makes a lot more sense here, and of course you have bills to pay too. That 20% commission isn't just covering the cost of time you put into the course builder and hosting now, it covers hosting in perpetuity.


I get that, and I wish you the best with it. It's definitely interesting like I said. I'm not sure what financial model would make it seem less intimidating, but I'd imagine as a indie course-maker-on-the-side it'd be too expensive. Maybe a different pricing scheme for corporations.


I'd assume 20% covers payment processing fees, collecting VAT/etc where appropriate, and so on.

As a comparison, Leanpub charges 20% for books/courses (not sure if those courses are on par with the features offered by tigyog). You'd get better pricing with Gumroad, but no interactive features on that platform. 20% is more than fair in my opinion.


I feel the same way. I believe 20% is very reasonable if it drives traffic. So it's a chicken and egg problem. Right now, due to it not having much courses there, the value isn't there.

Side note on nav UX. I expect a right click on logo to be able to open up the tigyog landing page, not save image dialog.


[flagged]


Not sure what's your intent with all that "pseudo constructive criticism" tone. And also, what's the point of sharing links that are completely out of the purpose of the post?


[flagged]


Since you have such amount of free time, what about taking advantage of that and make a real contribution and proper feedback to this post.


I invited more positive and productive discussion on the advertised topic:

>"I'd enjoy hearing some concrete discussion of what unique vision you have for improving the intuition of people trying to do data science, and how this helps humanity, and your journey beyond A/B testing marketing techniques.

So far i've not received it from any replies (including yours) and haven't seen it happen in any other comment threads so far (including ones which could be made by yourself).

The lack of thoughtful discussion makes me believe this post is meant to be just a marketing/sales pitch (something I covered as a potential issue in my comment) rather than a post for having deep, thoughtful, expansive discussions on this topic.

Like I said, I think you are perhaps the one who isn't in sync with what kind of conversations are valued.


whatever you say my man


Your comment comes off bitter. You could just provide additional links for those interested, and/or not read/buy the course if you're not interested. Whatever is upsetting you is not this.


I am indeed bitter (def: anger and disappointment at being treated unfairly; resentment) about people using their credentials rather than real merits of their work to attempt to get a leg up when advertising their work. I covered my dissatisfaction about that in my post.

Distill.pub for example, despite being written by people who worked at OpenAI and (also funded by) Google Brain, makes nearly no mention of either. They've managed to successfully accomplish their goal (creating resources to help people improve their intuition about machine learning) without resorting to those tactics.


I covered my dissatisfaction about that in my post.

A Show HN is not really the place to vent that dissatisfaction, though, at least not in that form. Take a look at:

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html


I think the popularity of my post suggests it better represents the general sentiment of people who viewed the page than not, but I do accept the tone reflects my negative feelings towards the perceived credentialsim:substance ratio more than it does an impartial review of the content. Genuinely, feel free to remove the entirely of my thread if you think it is unproductive, I'm unable to edit it.


I think the popularity of my post suggests

People upvote highly emotive stuff all the time even if it's at odds with HN's guidelines so whatever it suggests, it doesn't suggest the place on HN where people showcase their work is also the place for harangues. People like harangues! It's just not the subforum for them.


Another recent example of interactive articles explaining machine learning concepts (this time from AWS, not google):

https://mlu-explain.github.io/


https://www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/12-steps-to-over...


perhaps I wasn't the one "out of sync with this site".


Thanks for the feedback! Did you mean the "I’ve worked at Google Brain and OpenAI" in the second para?

Also, yeah, Distill is amazing! Every post is a work of art. Learned so much from it.


You can find the number of times each is mentioned (3) by using a page search (ctrl+f).


Thank you for the candid feedback! It's definitely appreciated and we'll take note


Uh credentials are good actually. The point of credentials is that they allow me to trust someone without being an expert myself. Of course if you are already an expert then you can look beyond credentials to determine whether someone knows what they're doing or not




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