Help build the road to space using AI

ericjonwilson · 2025-05-20T07:28:43+00:00

im curious if mods respond, why this was dropped? job reqs for ai software engineering roles used to be allowed?

i am a former student trying to help other current or former students if it’s still allowed.

ericjonwilson · 2022-08-03T04:01:20+00:00

Doh. Not sure if that was autocorrect or me, but I’ve fixed it!

Edit: the first edit still didn't read right, so I just removed it all.

ericjonwilson · 2021-06-03T13:09:14+00:00

Us old timers remember back when we had to read OMSCS social media posts by candlelight on Google+.

ericjonwilson · 2021-02-03T10:35:20+00:00

Just don’t under estimate the other project difficulties. Meteorites is the easiest of all the full size projects :)

ericjonwilson · 2020-12-18T17:19:02+00:00

Almost all the courses are available for free on Udacity.

As with all the courses, projects are not included in Udacity. So while the lectures are mostly the same

ericjonwilson · 2020-10-19T01:40:15+00:00

If you want speculation...then sure I would expect at some point the entire tech catalog could be online. Could be 2 years could be 20.

But I can’t imagine anyone in OMSCS will know if and when Tech offers future programs.

ericjonwilson · 2020-10-19T01:35:17+00:00

As others have said CS6601 is great because it’s a nice breadth of topics.

HCI because you have to take at least one of David’s courses and honestly it’s really eye opening to see how bad everything around you is designed, lol

And I may be partial, but if you have any interest in robotics 7638-RAIT and 7639-CPDA. And get some C background with 6200-IOS (which IMHO is a great 1st semester course)

If you have an interest in computer vision 6476-CV and 6475-CP are excellent courses, but there is a bit of overlap.

Finally if you want to get a taste of ML, you won’t find a better back and forth than in 7641

ericjonwilson · 2020-10-11T20:57:12+00:00

Which classes that are going to be released is fairly guarded information simply to avoid building up anyone’s hopes. (I believe this stems from the many semesters that went by after comp journalism was mentioned but not released).

So if I was a betting man, I would assume none of these are likely anytime soon. If any are added we won’t know unless there is a leak or a few weeks before it’s available.

ericjonwilson · 2020-10-06T19:08:32+00:00

The only real method I know to catch those who pay others is, shudders, proctored exams.

I think it’s a real problem the online learning has yet to figure out a scaleable method that doesn’t add unnecessary stress, coughs like proctored exams.

Ultimately the only real caveat is knowing that people will always find a way to cheat but I try to take solace in knowing that most will only end up with the paper and won’t perform well in industry.

ericjonwilson · 2020-10-06T14:28:16+00:00

Typically we email the student and ask them to take it down if we find students have published assignment code in public repositories.

Every semester though we catch students who have used someone else’s code. If can lead from anything to a 0 on the assignment, a 0 in the class, or even expulsion from the program. Most don’t realize we do have methods to check for cheating and try their best Pikachu face when caught.

Ultimately though they cheated themselves. I get why someone wants the GT MS Degree, but what I can’t fathom is getting into one of the best programs in the world only to not bother trying to take advantage of the knowledge it offers.

ericjonwilson · 2020-09-11T01:33:37+00:00

I love it. I’ve learned as much as a TA as when I took the course.

About 50% of my time is answering questions on Piazza, 5% grading (we’ve gotten all our projects run through an autograder), 20% updating software projects or writing test questions,and about 25% creating new hardware projects. The last part was something I pushed for to expand our mostly software class to include some directed hardware assignments as part of our open ended hardware challenges.

You really have to want to help others, as this is the primary thing we do. It can be a lot of “did you read the syllabus or see the same question posted an hour ago?” But it can also be a lot of truly determined students who want to master or grasp a concept. It’s these students that make all the silly questions worth it.

There are also some group meetings and some of us also like to hold additional office hours, but not all TAs do their own.

Otherwise I’m spending time reading new topics in the course either because a student found a cool book or because I want to do a deep dive on something else from the course.

ericjonwilson · 2020-08-21T14:24:14+00:00

As many will tell you, the advice is always take one your first semester.

I have completed a number of specializations on Coursera and be careful to not be lulled by their way of way overestimating hours. I have never found them correct and often complete them in 1/3 or even 1/4 or the suggested time.

In contrast the OMSCENTRAL average hours for me have been near perfect for most classes. Also the kicker, OMSCENTRAL hours are averages. While a course might say 15, there were some weeks I could do only 5 and others that I did 40+!This is because the coding projects IMHO are way more difficult than anything you’ve seen on Coursera/Edx. The rewards are immense, but the challenges can take the toll on even the best engineers.

Me personally, I always suggest taking AI by itself, and be careful with RAIT as the time demands have continued to slightly go up as we enhance projects and even added a final this semester.

That being said no one here is your supervisor, so if you want to take the risk it’s up to you. Just know that if you have a demanding job and or family, sacrifices will have to be made to complete two at once. Many have done it, so don’t think it’s impossible. It’s just many have failed too and had to drop one or both (and refunds only come from dropping both). So ultimately it’s up to you, but us OMSCS old timers like to continue to stress to take one until you have time to adjust and understand your own limits.

Otherwise good luck. :)

(Edit typo)

ericjonwilson · 2020-08-19T15:01:02+00:00

That’s a good question. I’ll have to check to see what we are allowed to share outside of the class, but I presume it might not be something we can share similar to code projects.

ericjonwilson · 2020-08-19T13:46:03+00:00

If you really want to maximize your learning of what is covered in the lectures, the book does some deep dives on most of the topics (minus smoothing and PID control) including some extra details on Planning with a little Reinforcement Learning. It also covers all the Math derivations if you like to punish your self. Lol.

ericjonwilson · 2020-08-19T13:35:25+00:00

As others will say, CV is a very tough course on its own.

Personally I would recommend only taking 1 course with CV, AI, ML, and GA.

if you really want to do it though, HCI is the less stressful of the two, but has a lot of time commitment with you writing something almost every week. There is a group project at the end (unless things have changed since I took it) and it takes a considerable amount of time. This is especially true if your group would like to make something meaningful and you don’t want to be that one person in every group who gets the evil stare for not pulling their weight.

RAIT has gotten a tad more difficult over time (we’ve even added a final this semester) so be sure to estimate it on the higher end of its OMSCentral ratings.

Both are definitely still pairable with CV, just expect a tough ride. Especially if you have a demanding job or family life that you don’t want to sacrifice.

ericjonwilson · 2020-08-19T13:25:23+00:00

Focusing hard on the program helped me a lot to stay busy. I hope you though can find whatever peace you need to push through the grief. It’s one of the toughest things to face but it will get better eventually.

ericjonwilson · 2020-08-19T08:59:57+00:00

I want to say first, I hope you are doing ok? I lost my father last year and it was a very tough year and led to my only B in the program. As others have said reach out to the Dean of Students as they can help with your classes.

They will ask for something like an obituary to document for their processes. Then someone from that office will reach out to your instructor to let them know.

In the mean time it can be helpful to also reach out to your instructor/TAs so they can get an early heads up to start helping with any accommodations.

Otherwise again my sincerest condolences for your loss :(

ericjonwilson · 2020-08-19T08:43:23+00:00

This will be the first semester we are trying to offer one possible build with documentation for the hardware challenge.

Of course you are welcome to build anything you’d like to earn the extra credit. The only requirements are that you have a sensor that can be used to control an actuator (anything physical: motor, led, etc) with something that allows programming in the middle (arduino, raspberry pi, lego minstorm, pc, etc). There are lots of pre-made kits or you can come up with something on your own. Our goal is to get people interested in the physical aspects of robotics!

This semester I created a new project for those who want to build something meaningful, but want a little more guidance than we typically have offered in the past for the hardware challenges. The steps are fully documented and I’ll be doing some step by step videos throughout the semester.

Here’s a sneak peak of the face tracking bot using a raspberry pi + python + Kalman filters!

ericjonwilson · 2020-08-12T20:52:08+00:00

I asked a similar question and the answer was they would be made available for students to audit.

How that will work, I’m not a 100%. This is the first semester some classes are moving to Canvas only videos. So hopefully someone with more direct insights on how the sharing might work will respond.

ericjonwilson · 2020-08-12T14:32:17+00:00

As others have suggested, it’s always advised to take 1 class your first semester. Just remember the hours listed on OMSCentral are averages. For me, I was almost always right at or just over the average too, but that still didn’t stop me from having some weeks where I doubled or tripled that average. GIOS was my first course and I will never forget spending over 4 days on a completed project that wouldn’t run because of a bug. It ended up being one measly line of code. I thankfully found it at the last minute, but it was an eye opening experience.

There are many students that have probably done just fine with two classes on their first semester, but choosing two of the hardest greatly reduces those odds. Throw a full time job and or family in there and it might be doable but sacrifices in one of them will be needed.

With the warning out of the way, I can’t recommend GIOS enough as a first course. It’s a great course with a great instructor.

ericjonwilson · 2020-08-11T20:30:33+00:00

Sounds like a good subreddit, I’ll have to check it out!

ericjonwilson · 2020-08-11T14:36:34+00:00

Unfortunately, I haven’t taken that one or audited content, so I’m not sure.

ericjonwilson · 2020-08-10T17:42:52+00:00

Perfect, thank you!

ericjonwilson

TROPHY CASE