The.Algorithm.Design.Manual.Springer-Verlag.1998

Neural Networks
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Neural Networks
Neural networks are a computational paradigm inspired by the architecture of the human brain. The
intuition is that since brains are good at solving problems, machines built in the same way should be, too.
The basic computational component of the brain is a neuron, a simple unit that produces a non-linear,
weighted sum of its inputs, which are connections from other neurons. Neural networks are weighted
digraphs with neurons as vertices and weights on edges denoting the connection strength of the pair.
Brains are very good at learning and recognizing certain patterns. Learning in brains seems to work by
adding connections between different pairs of neurons and changing the strengths of the connections.
Modifying connection strength in response to training examples provides a natural way to ``teach'' a
neural network.
Although there have been attempts to apply neural networks to solving combinatorial optimization
problems, the successes have been rather limited. Simulated annealing is a much more straightforward
and efficient approach to optimization.
Neural networks have been more successful in classification and forecasting applications, such as optical
character recognition, gene prediction, and stock-market time-series prediction. A set of features for the
given patterns is selected, and each training example is represented in terms of its features. The network
is trained on a series of positive and negative examples, with the strengths of the connections adjusted to
recognize these examples. Output cells for each class of item are provided and the strength of these cells
on a given input used to determine the classification. Once the network is trained, feature vectors
corresponding to unknown items can be entered and a classification made.
Because neural networks are black boxes, with the strength of edges adjusted only by the training
examples, there is usually no way to figure out exactly why they are making the decisions that they are.
A particularly amusing instance where this led to trouble is reported in Section . Still, they can be
useful in certain pattern-recognition applications.
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