Principles of Neural Systems and Implementation Project Guidelines

To pass the class, students will need to write a multi-layer neural network in the language of their choice as a class project. Each student should write a neural network for a specific purpose that s/he will choose. At the end of the class, the students will explain what their neural network is designed to do, and how (if at all) it varies from a standard neural network.

Overview

The project will be done on an individual basis. It has three main components:

- Topic research

- Program / algorithm development

- Experimentation

Each of these components will count in determining the project grade. For topic research, you should examine the current relevant published literature and write a description of the topic including the main research issues. You should read at least three (3) published papers that directly relate to your topic and comment on their content in your report. Focus on insight here, not a rewrite of the abstract / conclusions.

Each project requires the development of a program. This means that some programming skills are essential for completing the project successfully.

The experimentation section involves three components:

- Experiment design

- Description of work done

- Analysis of the results

Experiment design is perhaps the most difficult of these. In your design you should indicate what you intend to do and why, and identify the input data to be used. A class period has been dedicated for discussion of designs and to obtain feedback. A description of the work done should be straightforward. You should indicate your analysis procedure in your experiment design.

Final Report

In no case will extensions be given. The final report should include a title, an abstract, an introduction, the body of the report, and a conclusion.

The body of the report for the project should contain three main sections: a review of the project topic, a discussion of your program implementation, and a description of the experiments that you conducted with a discussion of the results obtained.

In addition, a manual page documentation for your program and a listing of your program should be included as appendices. These pages do not count in the total number of pages required for the final report. Make sure that your program is well commented and that the documentation page contains sufficient details about the programs operation and parameters.

In summary, the final report should contain the following:

1. A one paragraph abstract outlining what the project is and what was achieved.

2. A review of previous work done and the current issues in the project topic (including the three references).

3. An overview of the remaining sections of your report (may be one paragraph).

4. A description of the experiments that were conducted.

5. A description of any programs that you developed.

6. A section on the results and observations from your experiments.

7. A conclusion summarizing the achievements of the project and suggesting future work.

8. A listing of your program

9. A detailed documentation for your program.