Practical Neural Network Recipes in C++

by Timothy Masters

This text serves as a cookbook for neural network solutions to practical problems using C++. It will enable those with moderate programming experience to select a neural network model appropriate to solving a particular problem, and to produce a working program implementing that network. The book provides guidance along the entire problem-solving path, including designing the training set, preprocessing variables, training and validating the network, and evaluating its performance. Though the book is not intended as a general course in neural networks, no background in neural works is assumed and all models are presented from the ground up.
The principle focus of the book is the three layer feedforward network, for more than a decade as the workhorse of professional arsenals. Other network models with strong performance records are also included.
Bound in the book is an IBM diskette that includes the source code for all programs in the book. Much of this code can be easily adapted to C compilers. In addition, the operation of all programs is thoroughly discussed both in the text and in the comments within the code to facilitate translation to other languages.

Genres: Computer Science, Technology, Artificial Intelligence

493 pages, Paperback

First published April 14, 1993

About the author

Timothy Masters received a PhD in mathematical statistics with a specialization in numerical computing. Since then he has continuously worked as an independent consultant for government and industry. His early research involved automated feature detection in high-altitude photographs while he developed applications for flood and drought prediction, detection of hidden missile silos, and identification of threatening military vehicles. Later he worked with medical researchers to develop computer algorithms for distinguishing between benign and malignant cells in needle biopsies. For the last twenty years he has focused primarily on automated financial market trading systems. He has authored numerous books on practical applications of neural networks and on developing and testing automated market trading systems.

In addition to his technical work, Timothy Masters is the author of two novels. Red Dust and Bones draws on his scientific background to create a hard-science-fiction mystery about humanity's first outpost on Mars and a discovery that could change our understanding of life itself. His other novel, Ixinia, ventures into fantasy.