An accessible and up-to-date treatment featuring the connection between neural networks and statistics A Statistical Approach to Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition presents a statistical treatment of the Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), which is the most widely used of the neural network models. This book aims to answer questions that arise when statisticians are first confronted with this type of model, such as: How robust is the model to outliers? Could the model be made more robust? Which points will have a high leverage? What are good starting values for the fitting algorithm? Thorough answers to these questions and many more are included, as well as worked examples and selected problems for the reader. Discussions on the use of MLP models with spatial and spectral data are also included. Further treatment of highly important principal aspects of the MLP are provided, such as the robustness of the model in the event of outlying or atypical data; the influence and sensitivity curves of the MLP; why the MLP is a fairly robust model; and modifications to make the MLP more robust. The author also provides clarification of several misconceptions that are prevalent in existing neural network literature. Throughout the book, the MLP model is extended in several directions to show that a statistical modeling approach can make valuable contributions, and further exploration for fitting MLP models is made possible via the R and S-PLUS® codes that are available on the book's related Web site. A Statistical Approach to Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition successfully connects logistic regression and linear discriminant analysis, thus making it a critical reference and self-study guide for students and professionals alike in the fields of mathematics, statistics, computer science, and electrical engineering.

Statistical pattern recognition; Probability density estimation; Single-layer networks; The multi-layer perceptron; Radial basis functions; Error functions; Parameter optimization algorithms; Pre-processing and feature extraction; Learning and generalization; Bayesian techniques; Appendix; References; Index.

This 1996 book explains the statistical framework for pattern recognition and machine learning, now in paperback.

Statistical pattern recognition is a very active area of study andresearch, which has seen many advances in recent years. New andemerging applications - such as data mining, web searching,multimedia data retrieval, face recognition, and cursivehandwriting recognition - require robust and efficient patternrecognition techniques. Statistical decision making and estimationare regarded as fundamental to the study of pattern recognition. Statistical Pattern Recognition, Second Edition has been fullyupdated with new methods, applications and references. It providesa comprehensive introduction to this vibrant area - with materialdrawn from engineering, statistics, computer science and the socialsciences - and covers many application areas, such as databasedesign, artificial neural networks, and decision supportsystems. * Provides a self-contained introduction to statistical patternrecognition. * Each technique described is illustrated by real examples. * Covers Bayesian methods, neural networks, support vectormachines, and unsupervised classification. * Each section concludes with a description of the applicationsthat have been addressed and with further developments of thetheory. * Includes background material on dissimilarity, parameterestimation, data, linear algebra and probability. * Features a variety of exercises, from 'open-book' questions tomore lengthy projects. The book is aimed primarily at senior undergraduate and graduatestudents studying statistical pattern recognition, patternprocessing, neural networks, and data mining, in both statisticsand engineering departments. It is also an excellent source ofreference for technical professionals working in advancedinformation development environments. For further information on the techniques and applicationsdiscussed in this book please visit ahref="http://www.statistical-pattern-recognition.net/"www.statistical-pattern-recognition.net/a

With the growing complexity of pattern recognition related problems being solved using Artificial Neural Networks, many ANN researchers are grappling with design issues such as the size of the network, the number of training patterns, and performance assessment and bounds. These researchers are continually rediscovering that many learning procedures lack the scaling property; the procedures simply fail, or yield unsatisfactory results when applied to problems of bigger size. Phenomena like these are very familiar to researchers in statistical pattern recognition (SPR), where the curse of dimensionality is a well-known dilemma. Issues related to the training and test sample sizes, feature space dimensionality, and the discriminatory power of different classifier types have all been extensively studied in the SPR literature. It appears however that many ANN researchers looking at pattern recognition problems are not aware of the ties between their field and SPR, and are therefore unable to successfully exploit work that has already been done in SPR. Similarly, many pattern recognition and computer vision researchers do not realize the potential of the ANN approach to solve problems such as feature extraction, segmentation, and object recognition. The present volume is designed as a contribution to the greater interaction between the ANN and SPR research communities.

PATTERN CLASSIFICATION a unified view of statistical and neural approaches The product of years of research and practical experience in pattern classification, this book offers a theory-based engineering perspective on neural networks and statistical pattern classification. Pattern Classification sheds new light on the relationship between seemingly unrelated approaches to pattern recognition, including statistical methods, polynomial regression, multilayer perceptron, and radial basis functions. Important topics such as feature selection, reject criteria, classifier performance measurement, and classifier combinations are fully covered, as well as material on techniques that, until now, would have required an extensive literature search to locate. A full program of illustrations, graphs, and examples helps make the operations and general properties of different classification approaches intuitively understandable. Offering a lucid presentation of complex applications and their algorithms, Pattern Classification is an invaluable resource for researchers, engineers, and graduate students in this rapidly developing field.

The classification of patterns is an important area of research which is central to all pattern recognition fields, including speech, image, robotics, and data analysis. Neural networks have been used successfully in a number of these fields, but so far their application has been based on a 'black box approach' with no real understanding of how they work. In this book, Sarunas Raudys - an internationally respected researcher in the area - provides an excellent mathematical and applied introduction to how neural network classifiers work and how they should be used.. .