Neural networks can be used to perform regression analysis. However, other techniques (see the early chapters) may offer a more effective solution. With regression analysis, we want to predict a result based on several input variables.
We can perform regression analysis using an output layer that consists of a single neuron that sums the weighted input plus bias of the previous hidden layer. Thus, the result is a single value representing the regression.
We will use a car evaluation database to demonstrate how to predict the acceptability of a car based on a series of attributes. The file containing the data we will be using can be downloaded from: http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/machine-learning-databases/car/car.data. It consists of car data such as price, number of passengers, and safety information, and an assessment of its overall quality. It is this latter element, quality, that we will try to predict. The comma-delimited values in...