Neural Networks with H2O on Hadoop with R

In this part of the chapter we will only briefly introduce you to a very extensive topic of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and their implementation in the h2o package for distributed machine learning in R. As a precise explanation of concepts related to Neural Networks goes far beyond the scope of this book, we will limit the theory to the bare minimum and guide you through a practical application of a simple Neural Network model performed on our flight data.

How do Neural Networks work?

It is very likely that at some point on your data analytical journey, you have come across the concept of Neural Networks in one way or another. Even if you are unaware of their mathematical underpinnings and theoretical assumptions, you've probably heard and followed many news stories about the advances of artificial intelligence and systems built on Neural Networks and their multi-layered versions in the form of Deep Learning algorithms.

As the name suggests, the...