Pattern Classification using Simplified Neural Networks

Abstract: In recent years, many neural network models have been proposed for pattern classification, function approximation and regression problems. This paper presents an approach for classifying patterns from simplified NNs. Although the predictive accuracy of ANNs is often higher than that of other methods or human experts, it is often said that ANNs are practically "black boxes", due to the complexity of the networks. In this paper, we have an attempted to open up these black boxes by reducing the complexity of the network. The factor makes this possible is the pruning algorithm. By eliminating redundant weights, redundant input and hidden units are identified and removed from the network. Using the pruning algorithm, we have been able to prune networks such that only a few input units, hidden units and connections left yield a simplified network. Experimental results on several benchmarks problems in neural networks show the effectiveness of the proposed approach with good generalization ability.