What are some good "toy problems" in data science? http://www.quora.com/Programming-Challenges-1/What-are-some-...
What are some good resources for learning about machine learning? http://www.quora.com/Machine-Learning/What-are-some-good-res...
How do I become a data scientist? http://www.quora.com/Educational-Resources/How-do-I-become-a...
What are some introductory resources for learning about large scale machine learning? http://www.quora.com/Machine-Learning/What-are-some-introduc...
What are some good learning projects to teach oneself about machine learning? http://www.quora.com/Machine-Learning/What-are-some-good-lea...
What are some good class projects for machine learning using MapReduce? http://www.quora.com/Machine-Learning/What-are-some-good-cla...
for a list of available courses see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2656156