Introduction to Neural Networks
Chapter 1: Foundations of Neural Networks
From Biological to Artificial Neurons
Weights and Biases: The Network's Parameters
Activation Functions: Introducing Non-Linearity
Structuring Networks: Layers and Connections
A Simple Feedforward Network Example
Practice: Calculating Neuron Output
Quiz for Chapter 1
Chapter 2: Preparing Data for Neural Networks
Understanding Input Data Representation
Feature Scaling: Normalization and Standardization
Handling Categorical Data: Encoding Techniques
Creating Data Batches for Training
Splitting Data: Training, Validation, and Test Sets
Hands-on Practical: Preprocessing Sample Data
Quiz for Chapter 2
Chapter 3: Forward Propagation: Generating Predictions
The Flow of Information in a Network
Linear Transformation: Weighted Sum Calculation
Applying Activation Functions Layer-wise
Matrix Operations for Efficient Computation
Calculating the Final Output Prediction
Hands-on Practical: Implementing Forward Propagation
Quiz for Chapter 3
Chapter 4: Training: Backpropagation and Gradient Descent
Measuring Performance: Loss Functions
The Concept of Gradient Descent
Backpropagation: Calculating Gradients Efficiently
Updating Weights and Biases
Learning Rate and Its Importance
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) and Variants
Practice: Calculating Gradients Manually
Quiz for Chapter 4
Chapter 5: Building and Training a Basic Neural Network
Setting up the Network Architecture
Initializing Weights and Biases
The Training Loop Structure
Implementing the Training Step
Monitoring Training Progress
Introduction to Deep Learning Frameworks (TensorFlow/PyTorch)
Hands-on Practical: Training a Simple Classifier
Quiz for Chapter 5
Chapter 6: Improving Network Performance and Generalization
Understanding Overfitting and Underfitting
The Role of Validation Sets
Regularization Techniques: L1 and L2
Dropout: Randomly Deactivating Neurons
Early Stopping: Halting Training Optimally
Hyperparameter Tuning Strategies
Practice: Applying Regularization
Quiz for Chapter 6
Feature Scaling: Normalization and Standardization
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- Deep Learning, Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville, 2016 (MIT Press) - This textbook provides a comprehensive overview of deep learning concepts, including the importance of data preprocessing techniques like feature scaling for network training.
- The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction, Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, and Jerome Friedman, 2009 (Springer) - A classic reference for statistical learning, covering fundamental data preprocessing and scaling methods extensively.
- Preprocessing data, scikit-learn developers, 2024 - Official documentation detailing various preprocessing techniques, including
StandardScalerandMinMaxScaler, and best practices for their application to avoid data leakage. - Notes on Normalization, Andrew Ng, 2023 (DeepLearning.AI) - Concise notes from a leading deep learning educator, explaining data normalization techniques relevant to neural networks.