Example – modeling the strength of concrete with ANNs

In the field of engineering, it is crucial to have accurate estimates of the performance of building materials. These estimates are required in order to develop safety guidelines governing the materials used in the construction of buildings, bridges, and roadways.

Estimating the strength of concrete is a challenge of particular interest. Although it is used in nearly every construction project, concrete performance varies greatly due to a wide variety of ingredients that interact in complex ways. As a result, it is difficult to accurately predict the strength of the final product. A model that could reliably predict concrete strength given a listing of the composition of the input materials could result in safer construction practices.

Step 1 – collecting data

For this analysis, we will utilize data on the compressive strength of concrete donated to the UCI Machine Learning Repository (http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml) by I-Cheng Yeh. As he...