Customer Reviews

Introduction to Neural Networks for C#, 2nd Edition

5 star:		(2)
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3 star:		(1)
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I really like the way this guy has gone about breaking down a very difficult topic and making it easily digestable. He steps you through the basics of neural networks in a way that no programmer could not understand. But the best part of the book is the fact that Jeff offers online courses, in which he talks you through the important aspects of the book. Now, Jeff is not the best speaker in the world, but the fact that he reviews the book really helps to solifidy what you are learning.

I am working through the book and after I have read the chapter, I go back and watch the videos. I feel like I am really getting all this. I have looked at neural network books before, but none of them have explained everything in detail the way this guy is. I highly recommend this book.

The author provides a needed introductory level book for NNs. I have several theoretical books on my shelf that hit me like a brick wall. Sifting through code with accompanying explanatory information is a luxury for non-theoretical folks like myself. Sadly, physically crunching the numbers (okay, letting code do it) while monitoring code execution is what some of us need to get a mathematical idea to sink in. This book provides that.

That being said, the author writes very mechanically, bordering on robotic. Just a little more writing finesse would greatly improve the readability. The text is still quite readable, though, and the references are available to dig deeper (Neural Smithing, for instance). In addition, for folks interested in the code architecture, this book is sadly lacking. Theoretical and mathematical information is first presented, followed by most of the code, and then code walkthrough. The code walkthrough is somewhat helpful and necessary, but discussion of the how and why of the code implementation is not adequately addressed. A few choice UML diagrams would greatly improve the reader's understanding of the code flow. This is especially important for the feedback sections.

Now, I bring this up because I think it is vital to an avid reader: I have only read the first 7 chapters. What? Really? And yet I am willing to rate it? Yes. It is the critique above that has kept the book sitting on my shelf the past several weeks. This is very interesting and directly applicable material and I should be willing and ready to devour it... and yet, I'm not. I will garner the will power to continue to the end because the Bot section was the content that queued me to by the book. Making learning agents, coupled with Buckland's approach in Programming Game AI by Example, is quite valuable to me. I think a 3rd edition could become a coder's gem.

The book explains everything in perfect detail, starting at the most basic level and finishing with advanced techniques. Source code is provided AND Maintained, with libraries open source and public, so you're getting more than what you paid for compared to most other books like this.

I own one other book by Heaton and he does the same there too, so I can safely say that this man understands what software developers are REALLY looking for. My new favorite author.

In this paragraph I will be discussing the book "Introduction to Neural Networks," self-published by Jeff Heaton. This is a book about neural networks, an important topic in computer science. This book covers an appropriate selection of neural network structures, training techniques, and applications. You will learn some things about neural network organization, training and applications. Along the way, you will even see C# code for performing addition and printing text to the console. Unfortunately, this book does not really provide a whole lot of information about anything. It will introduce an idea without giving the reader a good intuition for how to apply it, then move on. Then it will re-introduce the same idea in the next chapter, but again the explanation will leave something to be desired. At least the low information-density makes this book a quick read. (Figure 1-1 illustrates this important concept with an instructive diagram.) If nothing else, after reading this book you should be able to write a "hello, world" program in C# and perhaps define a neural network. That concludes by discussion of Jeff Heaton's "Introduction to Neural Networks" which, in case you forgot, is a book about neural networks -- an important topic in computer science. For more information, you could read other reviews, consult online resources, or order the book yourself.