Customer Reviews

Understanding 99% of Artificial Neural Networks: Introduction & Tricks

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

There are two hurdles to overcome with this "book." The first is the challenging English. I can safely say that I could decipher only about 85% of the English, from a linguistic standpoint. Critical statements about important issues regarding neural nets are so scrambled in word order and choice of vocabulary that they are simply not understandable to this multi-lingual reviewer. While this could have been remedied by employing a competent bi-lingual translator to edit the work, the author obviously chose not to engage one. The second hurdle rests in the concepts of neural nets. These are not explained in a useful way.

My hope was that the Visual Basic code might be useful. The author's choice of VB Script (ASP 3), rather than a more strongly typed language leaves the reader in a position of having to guess the data types that are being used (seldom declared at all). Even VB 6 would have been a better choice and made the code easier to understand. Variable names are either cryptic or (I'm guessing here) Portuguese . A conscientious use of descriptive variable names would have produced self-documenting code. My criticism here is that the code itself is obtuse.

The text is actually only 56 pages long, and that littered with large, nearly meaningless diagrams that clarify little, and sophomoric philosophical comments and sweeping generalities. In such a brief work, the loss of focus is exasperating.

The table of contents contains 82 entries for a book of 120 pages (including back matter). The index is useless. For example, there are separate entries for "artificial", "Artificial" and "ARTIFICIAL", each listing identical page references for more than 1/3 of all the pages in the book. In the bibliography, all but one of the entries is prior to 1993, and many are incomplete references, such as an author, year and title, but no publisher or named periodical.

Why should you care about all these shortcomings? I am already familiar with neural net theory, and yet I could not understand much of the text. I am an experienced software developer, and yet I have difficulty following the sample code in the appendix.

SUMMARY: The entirety of this material should have been cleaned up linguistically, then submitted to a magazine as an article. It hardly comprises sufficient content for a book. As it stands, it fails to fulfill the promise of its title. A reader new to neural nets is unlikely to be satisfied with their expenditure of time and money here. Sorry.

P.S. As you look through the other reviews of this book, it's not too difficult to identify the numerous "planted" ones. They subvert the usefulness of the Average Rating. You would be wise to read all the reviews.

Most striking about the book is the poor grammar. True, we engineers are not known to be a linguistically elegant lot, but the grammatical errors in this text do serve as obstacles to any clear explanations of the topic. It should have been proofread by a native English speaker. Regarding the technology explained, the book misses the mark because it doesn't simplify the areas in which people truly have difficulty. Specifically, it doesn't clearly describe how error is "backpropagated" in the standard backpropagation neural net. That topic is the core of the subject and the book misses it. The author merely baby talks the easy parts of the subject and gives misleading pseudocode. There are many books that are much better at presenting simple, intuitive explanations of the theory. Lastly, the book assumes that backprop and Kohonen nets are "99% of artificial neural networks". That is an outdated view. Today, there are *many* types of networks (e.g., recurrent backpropagation nets, reinforcement learning nets, competitive learning nets, counterpropagation nets, neural gas nets, growing neural gas nets, etc.) None of these is addressed at all. Frankly, I would have been minimally satisfied with a clear explanation of the backprop and the Kohonen algorithms, but even that was lacking. I give it the second star only because the goal was a worthy one.

I was disappointed with this book. First off, an English editor was sorely needed for this book. Although you can get though it, if you're going to write a book, come on, get someone who speaks the language to review it. Content wise, its more like a technical article you would find in a magazine. Not a whole lot of content. 50% of the book (which is only just over 100 pages) is vb source code. I've read other beginning books on the subject and this one is far too light even for someone new to the topic of neural networks.

I am an expert that has read numerous presentations of artificial neural networks -- for beginners as well as for experts. I cannot remember ever seeing a more misleading presentation than the one provided by this book. The text's grammatical constructs are poor and the basic principles of the subject are poorly presented. Understand, I don't give poor marks for its basic simplicity; I object to the poor, misleading presentation. Simplicity and accuracy are essential to a clear presentation of this topic and the goal of writing a simple text is a worthy one, but you will find much better material in other books...Awwww heck, you can find better material through a simple Google search. Just remember this quote from Albert Einstein: "Things should be made as simple as possible -- and no simpler."

I thought I'd found THE introductory book regarding neural nets.
The concept is perfect, the info is all there, but the book
style and poor english is incredibly difficult to read and
follow.

Considering the technical nature of the subject matter and the
fact that the author is not english speaking one would think
that the draft would have been edited and checked by english
speaking editors. This was not the case here.

Steer clear - I found this book horribly frustrating to read
(I still haven't finished it). Almost every single sentence
is marred by stuttering semantic and grammatical errors.

Bitterly disappointing - and published by an American company...

1. I never read anything as poor as this book in my whole life.
2. I advise author to get another field of interest for writing.
3. He should write in his native language or use a translator.

I fully agree with HENRY970 from South Africa. Bosque has no idea about how to structure a book or a chapter. Please don't waste your money and time.

I am an expert that has read numerous presentations of artificial neural networks for raw, non-mathematically oriented beginners as well as those for experts. I cannot remember ever reading one more misleading to beginners than this one. The grammar is poor and the principles are poorly presented. Understand, I do not rate this text poorly for its simplicity; I object to the poor, misleading presentation. Simplicity is actually essential to understanding this topic, but you will find much better material in other books...Awwww heck, you can find better material through a simple Google search. Just remember this quote from Albert Einstein: "Things should be made as simple as possible -- and no simpler."

I am an expert that has read numerous presentations of artificial neural networks for raw, non-mathematically oriented beginners as well as those for experts. I cannot remember ever reading one more misleading to beginners than this one. The grammar is poor and the principles are poorly presented. Understand, I do not rate this text poorly for its simplicity; I object to the poor, misleading presentation. Simplicity is actually essential to understanding this topic, but you will find much better material in other books...Awwww heck, you can find better material through a simple Google search. Just remember this quote from Albert Einstein: "Things should be made as simple as possible -- and no simpler."

I am an expert that has read numerous presentations of artificial neural networks for raw, non-mathematically oriented beginners as well as those for experts. I cannot remember ever reading one more misleading to beginners than this one. The grammar is poor and the principles are poorly presented. Understand, I do not rate this text poorly for its simplicity; I object to the poor, misleading presentation. Simplicity is actually essential to understanding this topic, but you will find much better material in other books. Heck, you can find better material through a simple Google search. Just remember this quote from Albert Einstein: "Things should be made as simple as possible -- and no simpler."