The quote actually sounds very reasonable. A neural network will frequently be the worst way of solving a problem. However, it has the advantage that, when there is not clear solution, it can frequently offer a reasonable guess, even with incorrect or incomplete information. The example I like to use when I explain it is "Verbal SQL". Imagine the following exchange:

Ovid: Who's the new guy with the blond hair working in accounting?
Bob: That's 'Jim', but he's actually a brunette and he works in human resources.

In this case, I got the hair color and the employee department wrong, but I still get good results. Further, I left out "hire date", but implied that the person was "new". It would be difficult to write an SQL statement that will get me the correct answer.

On the other hand, what if I were actually meaning the new blond lady working in accounting? Gender probably has a higher chance of being accurate then the department that a person works in, so Bob might have given me the wrong answer. Neural networks are prone to the same types of problems. They can ascertain strange correlations that we might not consider, but they can also give incorrect results, particularly if we ask poor questions.

Cheers,
Ovid

New address of my CGI Course.

In reply to Re(*): Neural Nets and Verbal SQL by Ovid
in thread Testing Inline::C Modules by Ovid

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