I got this from elsewhere but have put the courses I think would benefit us for researching horse racing systems.

Article Below:
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For all of you who don´t know about this.
At the moment stanford is doing some kind of online education expirement.
For free ofcourse.

It isn´t new that big universitys have some online education stuff for free on there webpage but this year stanford is starting something really cool.
Basically you learn all the stuff the real students also learn and ofcourse you will be provided with the same sources and so on. I think it is awesome and I already signed in for computer science and computer security aswell as for cryptography courses.

Here are all the courses you can join:

Complex Systems:
Model Thinking (http://www.modelthinker-class.org/)

Computer Science:
CS 101 (http://www.cs101-class.org/)
Machine Learning (http://jan2012.ml-class.org/)
Natural Language Processing (http://www.nlp-class.org/)
Game Theory (http://www.game-theory-class.org/)
Probalistc Graphical Models (http://www.pgm-class.org/)
Design and Analysis of Algorithms I (http://www.algo-class.org/)


Do some research about that yourself. It´s really amazing and it´s even better then there old online courses which you can find here (http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx). Take also a look at the old ones.

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I have signed up to a few of the above.

Thanks for posting this UB.
I took a quick look at the Entrepreneur course.
It seems that in many ways USA is behind Australia.
Back in 2000, I did a small business course which exactly outlined the same principles in the video.

In other words, all the paperwork and cashflow models didn't apply.
Basically because you can't do it that way when starting up.
You need to have a business plan, but that plan is useless unless you have gone out to potential customers and asked them exactly what they need and want and how much they would pay, why would they go to someone different etc.

From that point, you create your business plan.

The thing that I learnt about business, is that no amount of advertising will get you quality and repeat customers as word of mouth recommendations.
In the 10 years I ran my computer business, I never advertised once.

Some products need to be advertised, but a service business is driven by referral.

__________________
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Yes Stanford has had all it's course material openly available online for many years.

I'm not aware of a Group of 8 University doing it here in Australia. I sure that there would be issues with IP here. An example being that at the University of Melbourne the course materials produced by the academics are owned by them (think this is still true), whereas at say Monash the materials (and anything else staff produce) are owned by the University. Therefore if they wanted to, Monash could do it much more easily than Melbourne.

There may be too much mathematical notation in those Stanford courses for your average punter

__________________
Pixie

"It's worth remembering that profit isn't profit until it's spent off the racecourse." -- Crash

Cheers UB, I have been fiddling with algorithm design for a while, will give that course a go.

Very true.

I think though if a punter really wants to be successful they should have some knowledge of probability and standard mathematical notations. Most punters probably don't know it, but then most punters also lose.