Understanding ANNs

Let's define ANNs in terms of their basic role and components. Although much of the literature on ANNs emphasizes the idea that they are biologically inspired by the way neurons connect in a brain, we don't need to be biologists or neuroscientists to understand the fundamental concepts of an ANN.

First of all, an ANN is a statistical model. What is a statistical model? A statistical model is a pair of elements, namely the space S (a set of observations) and the probability, P, where P is a distribution that approximates S (in other words, a function that would generate a set of observations that is very similar to S).

Here are two different ways to think of P:

• P is a simplification of a complex scenario.
• P is the function that generated S in the first place, or at the very least a set of observations very similar to S.

Thus, ANNs are models...