Neural Networks Beginnings
Jade Carter
The book is an excellent resource for those who want to get acquainted with the basics of neural networks and their application in life. The book explains in detail what a neuron is and how it works in a neural network, what weights and biases are, how a neuron makes decisions, and how a neural network is built. In addition, the book covers topics such as training neural networks, the main types of neural networks (fully connected, convolutional, and recurrent), and their application to classification, regression, and clustering problems.The author explains in detail how to use these methods in neural networks and how they can help in solving complex problems.Whether you are new to the field of neural networks or have some experience with them, this book will be a useful resource for expanding your knowledge and skills. It provides clear and accessible information about a technology that is becoming increasingly important in our lives.
Jade Carter
Neural Networks Beginnings
Introduction
Neural networks are computer systems that attempt to imitate the functioning of the human brain. They consist of neurons that are connected and process information by transmitting it through neural connections. Each neuron performs a simple function, but together they can process complex tasks.
Neural networks are important because they allow us to solve tasks that were previously impossible or very difficult to solve using traditional programming methods. They are used in various fields, including image and sound processing, speech recognition, economic trend forecasting, production process management, and much more.
Currently, neural networks are one of the key components of machine learning and artificial intelligence. They can be trained on large amounts of data and gradually improve their results, making them very useful for solving tasks that were previously inaccessible for automation.
The goal of this book is to introduce the reader to the basics of neural networks, starting with simple concepts and methods and ending with more complex topics. In the book, you will learn how neurons work, how to train neural networks, how to choose the appropriate neural network for a particular task, and how to apply neural networks to solve classification, regression, and clustering tasks.
The book is aimed at beginners and does not require any prior knowledge in the field of machine learning. It provides the reader with a complete practical guide to working with neural networks, which will help to start applying them in their own projects. By reading the book, you will acquire the necessary knowledge and practical skills for working with neural networks, as well as learn about the latest trends and developments in this field.
Our book will help you to:
Understand how neural networks work and what tasks they can solve;
Learn about various types of neural networks and choose the most suitable one for a particular task;
Learn how to create and train neural networks using different libraries and tools;
Master techniques for working with data, preparing data, and selecting the most appropriate model parameters to achieve the best results;
Learn about the application of neural networks in various fields such as image processing, speech recognition, text analysis, forecasting, and more;
Gain practical skills in working with neural networks through examples that can be applied in real projects.
In this book, we will focus on a practical approach and provide numerous examples and tasks that will help you better understand and absorb the material. You will learn how to create neural networks from scratch, train them on real data, and evaluate their results. We will also provide a wealth of resources and links to help you continue your learning and development in this field.
We are confident that this book will be useful for anyone interested in neural networks, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Whether you are a student, IT professional, or simply a technology enthusiast, you will find a lot of useful information and practical skills in this book. Let's begin our journey into the world of neural networks!
Chapter 1: Basics of Neural Networks
Neural networks are a powerful tool in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning. They are used in many applications, such as speech recognition, image processing, and forecasting. However, to understand how a neural network works, one must start with the basics.
The basic unit of a neural network is a neuron. A neuron is a simple information processing unit that mimics the function of a nerve cell in our brain. A neuron receives input signals from other neurons and generates an output signal that is passed on to other neurons.
Each neuron in a neural network has weights and biases. Weights determine how important each input signal is to the neuron's function, while biases are added to the sum of the input signals to make the neuron more flexible and enable it to make decisions based on a wider range of input data.
When a neuron receives input data, it multiplies the inputs by the weights and adds the bias. It then applies an activation function, which determines whether the neuron should activate and pass on the signal further through the network. The activation function can vary depending on the task the neural network is designed to perform. For example, the activation function can be sigmoid, hyperbolic tangent, ReLU (Rectified Linear Unit), and many others.
Neural networks are a powerful tool in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning. They are used in many applications such as speech recognition, image processing, and prediction. However, to understand how a neural network works, we need to start with the basics.
The foundation of a neural network is a neuron. A neuron is a simple unit of information processing that mimics the function of a nerve cell in our brain. A neuron receives input signals from other neurons and generates an output signal that is passed on to other neurons.
Each neuron in a neural network has weights and biases. Weights determine how important each input signal is for the neuron's function, while biases are added to the sum of input signals to make the neuron more flexible and able to make decisions across a wider range of input data.
When a neuron receives input data, it multiplies it by the weights and adds the bias. It then applies an activation function that determines whether the neuron should be activated and pass the signal on to the next layer of the network. The activation function can vary depending on the task the neural network is performing. For example, the activation function could be sigmoid, hyperbolic tangent, ReLU (Rectified Linear Unit), or many others.
A neural network consists of many neurons that are organized into layers. There are several types of layers, but the most common types are input, hidden, and output layers. The input layer takes in the input data, while the output layer produces the result of the neural network's processing. Hidden layers are located between the input and output layers and perform various computations that help the neural network solve the task.
When we talk about how a neural network is constructed, we are referring to how it organizes neurons into layers, how each neuron processes input signals, and what activation functions are used. There are many different neural network architectures, and the choice of a specific architecture depends on the specific task we want to solve.
It is important to understand that a neural network learns by adjusting the weights and biases to achieve the best result on the training data. Neural network training occurs in several stages. In the first stage, we provide input data and the desired output for that data. The neural network then predicts the result, and we compare it to the desired result to determine the error.
Using backpropagation, we can adjust the weights and biases to reduce the error and improve the accuracy of the predictions. This process is repeated many times until we reach the desired level of accuracy.
To better understand the concepts we've learned in Chapter 1, let's look at some examples of using neural networks:
Automatic Speech Recognition:
The neural network takes an audio file and breaks it down into sequences of fragments. Each fragment represents a short segment of sound that may contain speech sound samples.
Then each fragment is passed through a layer of neurons that use recurrent connections. This means that each neuron stores its previous state in memory and uses it to make decisions at the current step.
After the neural network processes all the sound fragments, we will obtain a sequence of probabilities for each speech sound sample in the file. Then we use a language model to generate a transcription of the speech.
Recommendation System:
The neural network takes user data, such as their preferences, purchases, viewing history, etc.
Then the neural network analyzes this data and uses it to predict what the user may be interested in. For example, if the user previously purchased science fiction books, the neural network may recommend other books on this topic.
For this, the neural network can use different types of neural networks, such as convolutional neural networks or recurrent neural networks.
Automatic Emotion Detection:
The neural network takes data about a person's voice, facial expressions, or body gestures.
Then the neural network analyzes this data and uses it to determine the person's emotional state. For example, the neural network may determine that a person is happy, sad, angry, or experiencing other emotions.
For this, the neural network can use convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, or a combination of different types of networks.
These are just some examples of how neural networks can be applied in real life. Each of these examples can be implemented using different types of neural networks and configurations, and each may require a large amount of data for training. However, understanding the basics of how neural networks work and their structural elements, such as neurons, weights, and activation functions, is key to building effective neural networks and solving various machine learning tasks.
The examples described in the first chapter can be implemented using various software tools for machine learning and neural network development. Let's look at the most popular ones.
TensorFlow: an open-source software for machine learning developed by Google. TensorFlow supports various types of neural networks and makes it easy to create, train, and deploy machine learning models.
Keras: a high-level interface for building neural networks that works on top of TensorFlow. Keras simplifies the process of creating neural networks and allows for quick experimentation with different architectures and hyperparameters.
PyTorch is an open-source machine learning software developed by Facebook. PyTorch also supports various types of neural networks and has a user-friendly interface for creating and training models.
Scikit-learn is a Python library for machine learning. Scikit-learn includes many machine learning algorithms, including some types of neural networks, and simplifies the process of creating and evaluating models.
The specific choice of working environment depends on the specific task and the developer's personal preferences. However, all of these tools have extensive documentation and user communities that can help in the process of working with them.
Let's take a closer look at the implementation of the practical examples mentioned above in the TensorFlow environment.
Digit recognition in images. For digit recognition in images, we can use a neural network with several convolutional layers and fully connected layers based on the TensorFlow library. Below is an approximate implementation of such a neural network.
The first step is to import the necessary TensorFlow modules and load the training and testing data:
import tensorflow as tf
from tensorflow import keras
#Load MNIST dataset
(train_images, train_labels), (test_images, test_labels) = keras.datasets.mnist.load_data()
#Convert data to a format suitable for training a neural network and normalize it
train_images = train_images.reshape((60000, 28, 28, 1))
train_images = train_images / 255.0
test_images = test_images.reshape((10000, 28, 28, 1))
test_images = test_images / 255.0
Define the neural network model. In this example, we will use a neural network with three convolutional layers, each followed by a max pooling layer, and two fully connected layers. The output layer will consist of 10 neurons corresponding to the digit classes, and will use the softmax activation function.
model = keras.Sequential([
keras.layers.Conv2D(32, (3, 3), activation='relu', input_shape=(28, 28, 1)),
keras.layers.MaxPooling2D((2, 2)),
keras.layers.Conv2D(64, (3, 3), activation='relu'),
keras.layers.MaxPooling2D((2, 2)),
keras.layers.Conv2D(64, (3, 3), activation='relu'),
