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

Avoiding overfitting in the model


The fitting of the training data causes the model to determine the weights and biases along with the activation function values. When the algorithm does too well in some training dataset, it is said to be too much aligned to that particular dataset. This leads to high variance in the output values when the test data is very different from the training data. This high estimate variance is calledoverfitting. The predictions are affected due to the training data provided.

There are many possible ways to handle overfitting in neural networks. The first is regularization, similar to regression. There are two kinds of regularizations:

  • L1 or lasso regularization
  • L2 or ridge regularization
  • Max norm constraints
  • Dropouts in neural networks

Regularization introduces a cost term to impact the activation function. It tries to change most of the coefficients by bringing in more features with the objective function. Hence, it tries to push the coefficients for many variables...