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- NEURAL NETWORK PC TOOLS
-
- SOFTWARE USER'S GUIDE
-
- $Revision: 1.0 $ $Date: 18 Sep 1989 9:38:14 $
-
- INTRODUCTION
-
- The software described in this User's Guide is that described in the
- chapter on Neural Network PC Tool Implementations in the book entitled
- Neural Network PC Tools: A Practical Guide, to be published by
- Academic Press in 1990. This software may be copied and distributed
- AS LONG AS IT IS NOT MODIFIED. In particular, any problems with the
- source code should be brought to the attention of the authors.
-
- If you use this software, consider it as shareware and please send
- $5.00 to the authors at the following address: Roy Dobbins, 5833
- Humblebee Road, Columbia, MD 21045. As additions are made to this
- software diskette, such as including self-organizing (Kohonen)
- networks, the price will increase. It is anticipated that the price
- for the diskette sold in conjunction with the book will be about $20.
-
- BACKGROUND
-
- Much excitement exists due to the apparent ability of artificial
- neural networks to imitate the brain's ability to make decisions and
- draw conclusions when presented with complex, noisy and/or partial
- information. This software is for the engineer or programmer who is
- interested in solving practical problems with neural networks.
-
- It is a myth that the only way to achieve results with neural networks
- is with a million dollars, a supercomputer, and an interdisciplinary
- team of Nobel laureates. There are some commercial vendors out there
- who would like you to believe that, though.
-
- Using simple hardware and software tools, it is possible to solve
- practical problems that are otherwise impossible or impractical.
- Neural network tools (NNT's) offer a solution to some problems that
- can't be solved any other way known to the authors.
-
- THE BACK-PROPAGATION NNT: BATCHNET
-
- This release contains both source and executable code for a "standard"
- three layer back-propagation neural network. The executable program
- is called batchnet.exe; its source code is in the file batchnet.c.
- The program for generating random weights used as input to the
- training run is weights.exe; its source code is in weights.c. These
- files were compiled using Turbo C v 2.0, but can also be compiled in
- Microsoft C.
-
- They were compiled using the 80x87 emulator mode, so that they will
- run even if you don't have a co-processor. If you have a coprocessor
- and want batchnet to run faster, which may be especially important in
- training, you can recompile batchnet.c using the 80x87 option. Always
- use the compact model.
-
-
- To run the batchnet program, you must specify the run file that it
- will use. Look at the demo.bat and demo.run files to see what we
- mean. Demo.bat also illustrates one of the options for batchnet; you
- can specify the interval of iterations between error printout. (The
- error is the mean sum-squared error of the output nodes.)
-
- The other option for batchnet is to specify what sum-squared error is
- required for the program to terminate training. The default value is
- 0.04. The default number of iterations between error printouts is
- 100.
-
- In the run file, you specify a number of things. Look at demo.run in
- detail to see what they are; there is explanation following the run
- data for the two runs that tell what goes where.
-
- First, you specify the number of runs. The demo has two. This is
- fairly typical. You often have a training run followed by a test run,
- as is the case in the demo.
-
- You then specify the filenames for a number of files: the output file
- that gives the values of the output nodes for each pattern on the last
- iteration (or the only iteration, if you are in testing mode and there
- is only one iteration), the error file that gives you the average sum
- squared error value each specified number of iterations, the source
- pattern file (values normalized between 0 and 1), the input weights
- file (generated by weights.exe for a training run, and consisting of
- the output weights file from training for a testing run), and the
- output weights file which gives you weight values after the last
- iteration.
-
- Note that the pattern files have values for each input node followed
- by values for each output node followed by an ID field that you can
- use to identify each pattern in some way. The input and output node
- values should be between 0 and 1.
-
- Following filenames, you specify, for each run, the number of input
- patterns, the number of epochs (iterations of entire pattern set), the
- number of input nodes, number of hidden nodes, number of output nodes,
- the value for the learning coefficient eta, and the value for the
- momentum factor alpha. The number of epochs varies a lot during
- training, but often is in the range of 100-1000; during testing, you
- only do one iteration.
-
- Sample files are given that you can run with demo.bat; the output
- files you will get when you run the demo are already on the diskette
- as mytest.out, mytrain.out, mytrain.wts, mytest.wts, mytrain.err, and
- mytest.err. You will get similar files without the "my" prefix when
- you run the demo.bat program, and you can compare corresponding files
- to see that they are the same.
-
- All you have to do is run "demo.bat" in order to both train and test
- the batchnet artificial neural network on the patterns in the
- train.pat and test.pat files. These pattern files are built from
- actual electroencephalogram (EEG) spike parameter data, and illustrate
- the use of a parameter-based NNT.
-
- The training phase of the demo.bat will probably take about 45 minutes
- on a 4.77 MHz 8088 PC with coprocessor. A 10 MHz Grid 80286 Laptop with
- no coprocessor takes about 140 minutes. The coprocessor makes the
- difference!
-
-