| Ryan Paul Lafler, Anna Wade |
Capable of accepting and mapping complex relationships hidden within structured and unstructured data, neural networks are built from layers of neurons and activation functions that interact, preserve, and exchange information between layers to develop highly flexible and robust predictive models. Neural networks are versatile in their applications to real-world problems; capable of regression, classification, and generating entirely new data from existing data sources, neural networks are accelerating recent breakthroughs in Deep Learning methodologies. Given the recent advancements in graphical processing unit (GPU) cards, cloud computing, and the availability of interpretable APIs like the Keras interface for TensorFlow, neural networks are rapidly moving from development to deployment in industries ranging from finance, healthcare, climatology, video streaming, business analytics, and marketing given their versatility in modeling complex problems using structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. This paper explores fundamental concepts associated with neural networks including their inner workings, their differences from traditional machine learning algorithms, and their capabilities in supervised, unsupervised, and generative AI workflows. It also serves as an intuitive, example-oriented guide for developing Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures using Python's Keras and TensorFlow libraries for regression and image classification tasks. |