Neural networks have been here for quite some time, with initial papers arriving more than a few decades ago. The recent popularity is due to the availability of better software for algorithms and proper hardware to run them. Initially, neural networks were motivated by how humans perceive the world and were modeled according to biological neuron functions. This was continuously modified over the course of time and has since been evolving to get a better performance.
Introduction to neural networks
A simple neural network
A simple neural net consists of a node which takes in an input or a list of inputs and performs a transformation. An example is shown in the following figure:
Mathematically, it takes the inputs x and applies...
