What is a Neural Network?

A neural network is a network of neurons inside animal as well as human brains which helps in communicating. This article is about artificial neural networks which are computing systems inspired by biological neural networks. Let’s understand the basics of artificial neural networks.

Artificial neural networks consist of artificial neurons. Each neuron connects to one or more neuron and forms the neural network. A neuron itself has a particular structure and a work done by it.

The diagram above shows the basic components of a simple neuron. A neuron can have several inputs (x1, x2, x3). Each input will be multiplied by a corresponding weight (w1, w2, w3). Then an “Operation” will be done upon the multiplied values. Generally, this “Operation” will be nothing other than algebraic addition and the result will be the weighted sum of the inputs.

The output of the “Operation” will be fed to the activation function “T” (the blue box). The activation function will give output (y) according to the input values and the nature of the function itself. There are several types of activation functions used in neurons.

Neurons can be categorized based on their activation functions. Each neuron type consists of different activation functions. Most common types of the neurons are,

A neural network will consist of many of these neurons. In complex neural networks, it is possible to have thousands of neurons. In a neural network, a neuron typically receives inputs form may other neurons and its output may be fed into many other neurons as well.

The neural network in the above diagram consists of nine neurons. These neurons are arranged in three layers. The first or left-most layer can be called the input layer. The last or the right-most layer called the output layer. All other layers are called hidden layers.

Related posts:

There was a fire drill at work this week. I work on a middle floor of a mid-rise building, so I had to walk down some stairs on the way out. (The building has elevators, but of course we couldn’t use…

The shape of the design development process has changed over the last few years with the emergence and growth of a very large ‘front end’ also known as ‘fuzzy front end’. The front end is made of the…

Between Oct 2020 and Jan 2021, Talent and Growth Department (TNG) decided to experiment and brought forth very different initiatives with respect to what it had been offering so far. We were very…