Neural Networks

Tuomas Sandholm
Carnegie Mellon University
Computer Science Department

How the brain works

Synaptic connections exhibit long-term changes in
the connection strengths based on patterns seen

Comparing brains with digital

computers

Parallelism
Graceful degradation
Inductive learning

ANN
(software/hardware,
synchronous/asynchronous)

Notation

Single unit (neuron) of an

artificial neural network

ini W j ,i a j
j

Activation Functions

j 1

j 0

ai stept ( W j ,i a j ) step0 ( W j ,i a j )
Where W0,i = t and a0= -1 fixed

Boolean gates can be simulated

by units with a step function
W=1

W=1
t=1.5

W=1
AND

t=0.5

W= -1

t=-0.5

W=1
OR
g is a step function

NOT

Topologies
Feed-forward vs. recurrent

Recurrent networks have state (activations from previous

time steps have to be remembered): Short-term memory.

Hopfield network
Bidirectional symmetric (Wi,j = Wj,i) connections
g is the sign function
All units are both input and output units
Activations are 1
Associative memory
After training on a set of examples, a new stimulus will
cause the network to settle into an activation pattern
corresponding to the example in the training set that most
closely resemble the new stimulus.
E.g. parts of photograph
Thrm. Can reliably store 0.138 #units training examples

Boltzman machine
Symmetric weights
Each output is 0 or 1
Includes units that are neither input units nor output units
Stochastic g, i.e. some probability (as a fn of ini) that g=1
State transitions that resemble simulated annealing.
Approximates the configuration that best meets the training set.

Learning in ANNs is the process of tuning the weights

Form of nonlinear regression.

ANN topology
Representation capability vs. overfitting risk.
A feed-forward net with one hidden layer can approximate any
continuous fn of the inputs.
With 2 hidden layers it can approximate any fn at all.
The #units needed in each layer may grow exponentially
Learning the topology
Hill-climbing vs. genetic algorithms vs.
Removing vs. adding (nodes/connections).
Compare candidates via cross-validation.

Perceptrons
O step0 ( W j I j )
j

Implementable with one output unit

Majority fn
Decision tree requires O(2n) nodes

Representation capability of a
perceptron
Every input can only affect the output in one direction
independent of other inputs.
E.g. unable to represent WillWait in the restaurant example.

Perceptrons can only represent linearly separable fns.

For a given problem, does one know in advance whether it is
linearly separable?

Linear separability in 3D
Minority Function

Learning linearly separable functions

Training examples used over and over!

epoch

Err = T-O

W j W j * I j * Err
Variant of perceptron learning rule.
Thrm. Will learn the linearly separable target fn. (if is not too high)
Intuition: gradient descent in a search space with no local optima

Encoding for ANNs

E.g. #patrons can be none, some or full

Local encoding:
None=0.0, Some=0.5, Full=1.0
Distributed encoding:
None
1
0
Some
0
1
Full
0
0

0
0
1

Majority Function

WillWait

Multilayer feedforward networks

Structural credit assignment problem
Back propagation algorithm
(again, Erri=Ti-Oi)
Updating between hidden & output units.

Wij W ji * a j * Erri * g ' (ini )

Updating between input & hidden units:

Errj W j ,i * Erri * g ' (ini )

i

Back propagation of the error

Wkj Wkj * I k * Err j * g ' (in j )

Back propagation (BP) as

gradient descent search
A way of localizing the computation of the gradient to units.
1
2
(
T

O
)
i i
2 i
1
E ( w ) (Ti g ( W ji a j )) 2
2 i
j
E

1
(Ti g ( Wij g ( Wkj , I k ))) 2

2 i
j
k

E
a j (Ti Oi ) * g ' ( W ji a j )
W ji
j
a j (Ti Oi ) * g ' (ini )
For hidden units we get
E
I k * g ' (in j ) W ji * Erri * g ' (ini )
Wkj
i
I k * g ' (in j ) * Errj

Observations on BP as gradient descent

1. Minimize error move in opposite direction of gradient
2. g needs to be differentiable
Cannot use sign fn or step fn
Use e.g. sigmoid g=g(1-g)
3. Gradient taken wrt. one training example at a time

ANN learning curve

WillWait problem

WillWait Problem

Expressiveness of BP
2n/n hidden units needed to represent arbitrary Boolean fns of n
inputs.
(such a network has O(2n) weights, and we need at least
2n bits to represent a Boolean fn)
Thrm. Any continuous fn f:[0,1]nRm
Can be implemented in a 3-layer network with 2n+1 hidden
units. (activation fns take special form) [Kolmogorov]

Efficiency of BP
Using is fast
Training is slow
Epoch takes O ( m | w |)
May need exponentially many epochs in #inputs

More on BP
Generalization:
Good on fns where output varies smoothly with input
Sensitivity to noise:
Very tolerant of noise
Does not give a degree of certainty in the output
Transparency:
Black box
Prior knowledge:
Hard to prime
No convergence guarantees

Summary of representation capabilities

(model class) of different supervised
learning methods
3-layer feedforward ANN
Decision Tree
Perceptron
K-Nearest neighbor
Version space