Where can I find the CFAR mailing list you mentioned?

I'm sorry, that can't be right. In the most recent public data, there are 11 homosexual MtFs, 3 homosexual FtMs, and 1 heterosexual FtM, not to mention the respondents who chose "Other". In Python:

 >>> import pandas as pd
>>> survey = pd.read_csv('2016_lw_survey_public_release_3.csv')
>>> print survey.groupby('Gender')['SexualOrientation'].value_counts()

After dropping the rows where the IQ was lower than 80 or higher than 190, age lower than 14 or higher than 60, and income higher than 300,000, and dropping the rows where the IQ, age or income were N/A, there still remain 5 homosexual MtFs and a couple pansexuals. Perhaps your anonymous friend was somewhat aggressive in pruning the data?

Hat tip goes to an anonymous friend of mine who had been playing around with the survey data, and noticed that all MtF and FtM trans survey respondents reported being bisexual.

What skills are overwhelmingly easier to learn in institutionalized context?

(e.g math wouldn't count, because even if motivation is circumvented as an issue in institutions, you should be theoretically to study everything at home. Neither would necessarily the handling of some kind of lab equipment, if there was some clear documentation available for you, and (assuming that you took the efforts to remember it) if the transfer to practice was straightforward (so pushing buttons and changing settings would be straightforward, while the precise motions of carving a specific kind of motive into wood would be less so))

Now, now, I'm entirely down with the use of ponies to make points about rationality.

friendly efforts

Just be grateful I'm not using ponies :-)

Could you please elaborate with specific examples of times when Jonah's explanations were too abstract and not sufficiently practical?

This will be useful information for us, because we certainly want to identify areas in which our curriculum needs further improvement. My personal recollection of Jonah's lectures is that they involved a lot of example code, visualization, back-and-forth Q&A, and interactive exploration of real datasets in lieu of presenting, say, abstract mathematical proofs.

It also skewed the distribution of topics taught away from things relevant to industry.

Along similar lines, what are some specific topics that you think were neglected in favor of more abstract but less applicable material?

I'm particularly interested in what material you thought was overemphasized in the curriculum--my impression is that all of the topics covered were very fundamental to data science as a whole. While one can express a valid preference for certain fundamental topics over others, I would be hard-pressed to say that any of the topics covered in the Signal curriculum weren't extremely industry-relevant.

I think it is better to assess personal fit for the bootcamp. There are a lot of advantages I think you can get from the program that would be difficult to acquire quickly on your own.

Aside from lectures, a lot of the program was self study, including a lot of my most productive time at the bootcamp, but there was normally the option to get help, and it was this help, advice, and strategy that I think made the program far more productive than what I would have done on my own, or in another bootcamp for that matter (I am under the impression longer bootcamps may develop specific skills at using the software better, but they don't convey nearly the same level of conceptual understanding of statistics in data science, and likewise there are many types of mistakes graduates of other programs will make that graduates of Signal's cohort have been taught not to). When there was not the option to get help, I usually shifted my work schedule and it wasn't much of a problem: there are so many projects to work on, that there was almost always something productive to work on where I wouldn't get stuck (optional exercises on prior projects or making prior projects better). I can see this being very frustrating for some people though, as getting stuck and not having immediate feedback interrupts flow.

Many of the organizational problems didn't seem to really be problems, and seemed more like differences which are good for some and not for others. Pair programming was not always optimal due to the large degree of differences between students. It wouldn't have made sense for everyone to pair program since it would have been holding back some of the faster students. A more rigid structure would have helped people who were less naturally self directed/focused though. Organizational problems that happened with respect to the first cohort in terms of setting up (furniture, internet, whiteboards, etc.) are unlikely to be problems for future cohorts now that the instructors have learned from experience and have a place set up. The first cohort took the risks and costs of such things, which later cohorts probably won't have to worry about.

This is not like other bootcamps, it is less expensive, more individually focused rather than having the entire group doing all the same curriculum, and there are a bunch of rationalists iteratively helping you decide which jobs are best to apply to, who can network you into what position, and which skills actually matter most for aiming for the specific jobs you are aimed at. I don't expect you to be able to have the same opportunities at a normal bootcamp, but a normal bootcamp is probably also lower risk if you don't trust yourself to make things work out (other programs may have quizzes where they throw you out if you fail, and essentially force you to remain focused, with Signal you are more in control yourself, and can take time off to apply to jobs.

I'm sorry that you had such a negative experience at the bootcamp. It isn't for everyone, and I don't think I would recommend Signal to people who are looking for what you wanted out of the bootcamp. I wish that it had been otherwise; nevertheless, I want to thank you for sharing your thoughts in such an honest and frank manner.

However, I think it's important to separate out your own experience from the experiences of other students. In many cases, including my own, they were radically different.

I'm not personally comfortable with your comment insofar as it seems to implicitly speak for all the students in the bootcamp. I know that my life improved greatly because I was able to come down here, but if I were a prospective student now, your comment might have dissuaded me from coming. For that reason, I believe it's useful to be more specific in your epistemic claims here--it may very well be true that the program is unsuitable for people in your reference class, but I think it would be bad if that fact ended up discouraging applicants for whom the program would be a great fit.

I'm surprised that you think the instructors don't know very much data science. On top of having a strong command of the underlying mathematics, Jonah and Sam were able to teach me things that aren't explained in textbooks, like the intuitive explanation of why the sum of squared error is minimized in linear regression and the fundamental importance of dimensionality reduction techniques. The numerous discussions I've had with Jonah have shaped my intellectual growth generally and made clear to me many of the more obscure aspects of data science specifically--for instance, I had been reading a couple papers on boosting out of personal interest and offhandedly made a remark to Jonah about something I found fascinating, and he was able to immediately understand and rectify a minor point of confusion I had been having.

Again, your perception of the instructors' competencies may have been the result of a mismatch between the sort of environment the program was trying to offer and the sort of environment you were hoping for. I wish that your experience could have been as positive as mine and hope you're able to find what you're looking for in the future. Based on your feedback, Signal is giving higher priority to giving prospective students a clear sense for the program's environment so that they're are well equipped to make informed decisions.

While I understand Fluttershy's concerns, overall I was quite happy with the program. I think many people could benefit from it, and I would expect things to go better in a number of ways for the second cohort.

I think one of the problems we did have was that the pace of the program was simply too quick for some of the participants. This shouldn't be an issue for the second cohort, since it is intended to last 12 weeks.

Similarly, it was somewhat unpleasant to have the program taking place in the same house where many of the participants were living. I don't blame Jonah and Robert for this, since at the beginning I thought it would be more convenient this way myself, but it didn't turn out that way. However, my understanding is that there will be separate office space for the second cohort, which will be a big improvement.

I think it's going too far to say that the program is "effectively self-directed," but it's true that there was less structure imposed than some would expect, and that a good part of the benefit came from personal study. In this sense, a more established bootcamp might be better for people who have somewhat less self discipline, but as Gentzel points out, there are also specific advantages to this one.