I did read the instructor's book, and I was still totally lost. This course is very hardcore. A lot of attendee have math/stats PHD, some of them I met were professionals, some were professors from business school (non-finance). Yet, most of the response were that "no, I don't really understand what this guys talking". Nevertheless, after carefully reading the notes/book for few months, you would truly appreciate the content.
Another thing is that there was quite few guest speakers. And All of them are industry heavy weight. In my year, I remember Robert Litterman and Emanuel Derman were there.
Edit:
If you want to read the papers on the site, I would recommend these 2. Understanding these 2 would cover 30%-40% of the core material.