NN
       Neural Network (NN)

	

	artificial neural network
neural nets
neural network
neuron
NN

    (ANN, commonly just "neural network"
   or "neural net") A network of many very simple processors
   ("units" or "neurons"), each possibly having a (small amount
   of) local memory.  The units are connected by unidirectional
   communication channels ("connections"), which carry numeric
   (as opposed to symbolic) data.  The units operate only on
   their local data and on the inputs they receive via the
   connections.

   A neural network is a processing device, either an
   algorithm, or actual hardware, whose design was inspired by
   the design and functioning of animal brains and components
   thereof.

   Most neural networks have some sort of "training" rule whereby
   the weights of connections are adjusted on the basis of
   presented patterns.  In other words, neural networks "learn"
   from examples, just like children learn to recognise dogs from
   examples of dogs, and exhibit some structural capability for
   generalisation.

   Neurons are often elementary non-linear signal processors (in
   the limit they are simple threshold discriminators).  Another
   feature of NNs which distinguishes them from other computing
   devices is a high degree of interconnection which allows a
   high degree of parallelism.  Further, there is no idle memory
   containing data and programs, but rather each neuron is
   pre-programmed and continuously active.

   The term "neural net" should logically, but in common usage
   never does, also include biological neural networks, whose
   elementary structures are far more complicated than the
   mathematical models used for ANNs.

   See Aspirin, Hopfield network, McCulloch-Pitts neuron.

   Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.ai.neural-nets.

   (1997-10-13)

	

	nn

    A terminal based program for reading
   Usenet news by Kim F. Storm , Texas
   Instruments A/S, Denmark.

   nn lets you decide which of the many news groups you are
   interested in, and unsubscribe to those which don't interest
   you.  nn lets you select articles to read from a menu in each
   of the groups you subscribe.  nn sorts and presents new
   articles very quickly because it uses its own local database
   to maintain all the necessary information (this database is
   built and maintained by the nnmaster program).

   The NNTP support was designed and implemented by Ren'e
   Seindal, Institute of Datalogy, University of Copenhagen,
   Denmark.

   E-mail:  (bugs, fixes, suggestions, etc.)

   Usenet newgroup: news:news.software.nn.

   (1995-12-04)