I found this a tantalizing tour (although a bit too much of an insider's tour for my knowledge level) of a lot of the current state of the art in Machine Learning. Well worth a read if you have any interest in the topic.

I also looked at some of the videos in the course linked at the end, and found the teaching quality disappointing (not very clear, fast speech, mumbling.. though to be fair I only saw two different professors).

Does anyone know of a really great quality (meaning attention to good quality communication of concepts... not necessarily slow or "for dummies" but clear) online intro course to Machine Learning?

Thank you for sharing. I like his appreciation of Physics. Physicists seem to do well in many non-Physics fields (economics, financial markets, CS, etc) and I've frequently wondered if it's because you have to be smart to go into the field, or if there are special tools they learn. I like Yann's comments on the applied nature of it.