Artificial Neural
Networks: A Tutorial
Ani. Jain
‘Michigan State University
Jianchang Mao
| KM Mobiuddin
{IBM Almaden Research Center
| These massively parallel
systems with large numbers
| of interconnected simpl
| processors may solve a variety
| of challenging computational
problems. This tutorial
provides the background and
the basics.
|
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WHY ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS?
“The long course of evolution has given the human brain many desie-
able charaeteristies not present in von Neumann or modern parallel com
puters. These include
+ massive parallelism,
+ isibuted representation and computation,
+ earning ability,
+ generalization ability,
+ adapsivity,
+ inherent contextual information procestng,
+ faultolerance, and
* low energy consumption
Itis hoped that devices based on biologieal neural nrworks will possess
some of these desirable characteristics
Modern digital computers outperform humans in the domain of
numeric computation and related symbol manipulation. However,
‘humans can eforlessly solve complex perceptual problems (ike recog
nizing a man in a crow from a mere glimpse of his face) at such a high
speed and extent as to dwar the world’ fastest computer Why is there
Sicha remarkable difference in their performance? The biological neural
system architectures completely different from the von Neumann archi
{eetute (See Table 1). This difference significantly affects the type of func-
sions each computational model can best perform.
‘Numerou efforts to develop “intelligent” programs based on von
[Neumann's centralized architecture have not resulted in general-purpose
inteligene programs. Inspired by biological neural neworks, ANNs are
massively parallel eomputing systems consisting ofan exremely large nu
berofsimple processors with many interconnections. ANN modelsarempt
‘ose some “organizational” principles believed robe used in the human
March i996 aChallenging probl
Letus consider the folowing problems of intarest to com-
puter scientists and engineers,
Pattern classification
‘The task of pattern classification sto assign an inputpat-
‘tern like 3 speech waveform or handwritten symbol) rep-
resented by a feature vector to one of many prespecified
‘lasses (See Figure A). Well-known applications include
‘character recognition, speech recagnition, EEG waveform