Types of Problems NeuroSolutions can Solve

Neural network problems can generally be categorized as one of four types. NeuroSolutions is one of the few products on the market that is able to handle all of these types of problems.

Classification
Classification problems are those where the goal is to label each input pattern as belonging to a certain class. A simple example of a classification problem is one where the goal of the neural network is to label each person as male or female (the two classes) based on their height and weight. The input into the neural network would be the height and weight measurements and the desired output would be their sex.

Function Approximation
Function Approximation problems are those where the goal is to determine a numeric value given a set of inputs. This is similar to classification problems except that the output is numeric. An example is to determine the wind chill factor (the desired output) given the temperature, humidity, and wind speed (the inputs). These problems are called function approximation because the neural network will try to approximate the functional relationship between the input and desired output.

Prediction
Prediction problems are those where the goal is to determine a future output given a set of inputs and the past history of the inputs. The main difference between prediction problems and the others is that prediction problems use the current input and previous inputs (the temporal history of the input) to determine a future output value. A typical example is to use the temporal history of a stock closing price as input (e.g., today’s and three previous day’ s prices) to try to predict tomorrow’s closing price.

Clustering
Clustering problems are those where you want the neural network to extract information from only the input data. For instance, you have survey data from various people. You would like to cluster (partition) the people into groups with similar buying habits in order to better target your marketing efforts. The fundamental difference between the clustering problem and the others is that there is no desired output.

All levels of NeuroSolutions come standard with the NeuralExpert. This intelligent wizard will automatically choose and configure a neural network for you based on the problem type you select and the data that you give it.

Back | Tour Topics | Next