Chapter 5
Discussion Questions
1) What is an artificial neural network and for what types of problems can it be used?
2) Compare artificial and biological neural networks. What aspects of biological networks are not mimicked by artificial ones? What aspects are similar?
3) What are the most common ANN architectures? For what types of problems can they be used?
4) ANN can be used for both supervised and unsupervised learning. Explain how they learn in a supervised mode and in an unsupervised mode.
Exercise
1) Go to Google Scholar (scholar.google.com). Conduct a search to find two papers written in the last five years that compare and contrast multiple machine-learning methods for a given problem domain. Observe commonalities and differences among their findings and prepare a report to summarize your understanding.
2) Go to neuroshell.com. Look at Gee Whiz examples. Comment on the feasibility of achieving the results claimed by the developers of this neural network model.
Chapter 6
Discussion Questions
1) What is deep learning? What can deep learning do that traditional machine-learning methods cannot?
2) List and briefly explain different learning paradigms/methods in AI.
3) What is representation learning, and how does it relate to machine learning and deep learning?
4) List and briefly describe the most commonly used ANN activation functions.
5) What is MLP, and how does it work? Explain the function of summation and activation weights in MLP-type ANN.
Exercise
1) Cognitive computing has become a popular term to define and characterize the extent of the ability of machines/computers to show “intelligent” behavior. Thanks to IBM Watson and its success on Jeopardy!, cognitive computing and cognitive analytics are now part of many real-world intelligent systems. In this exercise, identify at least three application cases where cognitive computing was used to solve complex real-world problems. Summarize your findings in a professionally organized report.
