Book Image

Neural Networks with R

By : Balaji Venkateswaran, Giuseppe Ciaburro
Book Image

Neural Networks with R

By: Balaji Venkateswaran, Giuseppe Ciaburro

Overview of this book

Neural networks are one of the most fascinating machine learning models for solving complex computational problems efficiently. Neural networks are used to solve wide range of problems in different areas of AI and machine learning. This book explains the niche aspects of neural networking and provides you with foundation to get started with advanced topics. The book begins with neural network design using the neural net package, then you’ll build a solid foundation knowledge of how a neural network learns from data, and the principles behind it. This book covers various types of neural network including recurrent neural networks and convoluted neural networks. You will not only learn how to train neural networks, but will also explore generalization of these networks. Later we will delve into combining different neural network models and work with the real-world use cases. By the end of this book, you will learn to implement neural network models in your applications with the help of practical examples in the book.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Learning in neural networks


As we saw in Chapter 1, Neural Network and Artificial Intelligence Concepts, neural networks is a machine learning algorithm that has the ability to learn from data and give us predictions using the model built. It is a universal function approximation, that is, any input, output data can be approximated to a mathematical function. 

The forward propagation gives us an initial mathematical function to arrive at output(s) based on inputs by choosing random weights. The difference between the actual and predicted is called the error term. The learning process in a feed-forward neural network actually happens during the backpropagation stage. The model is fine tuned with the weights by reducing the error term in each iteration. Gradient descent is used in the backpropagation process.

Let us cover the backpropagation in detail in this chapter, as it is an important machine learning aspect for neural networks.