Artificial Neural Networks

The final type of classification model that we will be studying is Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). Firstly, this class of model is inspired by how the human brain functions. More specifically, we try to mathematically emulate the interconnected-neurons architecture, hence the name – neural networks. Essentially, an artificial neural network architecture looks something like that shown in Figure 5.57:

Figure 5.57: Neural network architecture example

To the extreme left is the input data X, expanded into the N0 different feature dimensions. This example has two hidden layers, h1 and h2, having N1 and N2 number of neurons, respectively. Wait, what is a neuron? The nomenclature is derived from the human brain analogy, and a neuron in the context of an artificial neural network is essentially a node in the network/graph. And finally, in the figure, there is the output layer, Y, which consists of the N number of classes for the...