Neural Network Workshop

What: A hands-on workshop courtesy of the Machine Learning Group using Neural Networks that includes both the theory and practical implementation.

When: Tenatively January 26, 2011

Why: To raise Neural Network Awareness (NNA) and money for Noisebridge. Donations towards Noisebridge will be encouraged and appreciated.

Where: In the back classroom

Who: Anyone who wants to participate, either come and learn or help teach. Join the mailing list!

Workshop Agenda

• Math Preliminaries
  • Universal Approximators: Cybenko's Theorem
  • Linear Algebra: vectors, matricies
  • Optimization Theory: error functions, gradients
  • Machine Learning: regression, classification
• Neural Networks
  • Basic Architecture
  • Activation Functions
  • Error Functions and Output Layers
    • Regression (univariate and multivariate)
    • Classification (binary and multi-class, logistic and softmax)
  • Training
    • Backpropagation
  • Implementation
    • Identifying Faces with Neural Nets
    • ??? Other such ideas

Software

This is just a list of packages used for constructing and training neural networks:

• FANN
• Encog
• PyNN (Biophysical Neural Nets)