Chapter 7. Neural Networks

While neural networks have been around for a number of years, they have grown in popularity due to improved algorithms and more powerful machines. Some companies are building hardware systems that explicitly mimic neural networks (https://www.wired.com/2016/05/google-tpu-custom-chips/). The time has come to use this versatile technology to address data science problems.

In this chapter, we will explore the ideas and concepts behind neural networks and then demonstrate their use. Specifically, we will:

• Define and illustrate neural networks
• Describe how they are trained
• Examine various neural network architectures
• Discuss and demonstrate several different neural networks, including:
  • A simple Java example
  • A Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP) network
  • The k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) algorithm and others

The idea for an Artificial Neural Network (ANN), which we will call a neural network, originates from the neuron found in the brain. A neuron is a cell that has dendrites...