How do I determine the architecture for deep NN training according to the number of examples? - neural-network

As the title says, how can I determine the architecture or build a reasonable model for training a neural network with regards to the number of examples?
For example, assuming that I have roughly 50 thousand images and I have successfully converted all data to fit the model which means they are ready for training, how can I choose a model that is suitable for training a neural network? I am a little bit confused sometimes when I have data but I did not know how to initiate a model for training NN.

Fine tuning is the way
Sometimes you have a pre-trained CNN that you can use as a starting point for your domain. For more about fine tuning You can check here.
According to this, my advice is to fine tune a pre-trained Neural Network that you can find in Keras (This page, under "Available models") or TensorFlow. You can go deeper as far as you are confident with your training set!
In any case, you need to see the number of samples per class rather than the absolute number of images in your training set. If you are confident you can choose a Deep Learning SOA architecture and try to train it from zero.

Related

Steps to think of while trying to increase accuracy of network

How do you proceed to increasing accuracy of your neural network?
I have tried lots of architectures yet in my image detection ( classification + localization ) I can only get 75% accuracy.
I am using VOC2007 dataset, and I extracted only data where 1 person is present.
What are the steps I can think of to increase the accuracy of my object detector?
thanks for help.
You might want to have a look at my masters thesis Analysis and Optimization of Convolutional Neural Network Architectures, chapter 2.5 page 15:
A machine learning developer has the following choices to improve the model’s quality:
(I1) Change the problem definition (e.g., the classes which are to be distinguished)
(I2) Get more training data
(I3) Clean the training data
(I4) Change the preprocessing (see Appendix B.1)
(I5) Augment the training data set (see Appendix B.2)
(I6) Change the training setup (see Appendices B.3 to B.5)
(I7) Change the model (see Appendices B.6 and B.7)
It's always good to check thoroughly where exactly the problem is and compare it with a human baseline. Reliably getting better than a human is super hard.

Use a trained neural network to imitate its training data

I'm in the overtures of designing a prose imitation system. It will read a bunch of prose, then mimic it. It's mostly for fun so the mimicking prose doesn't need to make too much sense, but I'd like to make it as good as I can, with a minimal amount of effort.
My first idea is to use my example prose to train a classifying feed-forward neural network, which classifies its input as either part of the training data or not part. Then I'd like to somehow invert the neural network, finding new random inputs that also get classified by the trained network as being part of the training data. The obvious and stupid way of doing this is to randomly generate word lists and only output the ones that get classified above a certain threshold, but I think there is a better way, using the network itself to limit the search to certain regions of the input space. For example, maybe you could start with a random vector and do gradient descent optimisation to find a local maximum around the random starting point. Is there a word for this kind of imitation process? What are some of the known methods?
How about Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN, Goodfellow 2014) and their more advanced siblings like Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks? There are plenty of proper research articles out there, and also more gentle introductions like this one on DCGAN and this on GAN. To quote the latter:
GANs are an interesting idea that were first introduced in 2014 by a
group of researchers at the University of Montreal lead by Ian
Goodfellow (now at OpenAI). The main idea behind a GAN is to have two
competing neural network models. One takes noise as input and
generates samples (and so is called the generator). The other model
(called the discriminator) receives samples from both the generator
and the training data, and has to be able to distinguish between the
two sources. These two networks play a continuous game, where the
generator is learning to produce more and more realistic samples, and
the discriminator is learning to get better and better at
distinguishing generated data from real data. These two networks are
trained simultaneously, and the hope is that the competition will
drive the generated samples to be indistinguishable from real data.
(DC)GAN should fit your task quite well.

Continuously train MATLAB ANN, i.e. online training?

I would like to ask for ideas what options there is for training a MATLAB ANN (artificial neural network) continuously, i.e. not having a pre-prepared training set? The idea is to have an "online" data stream thus, when first creating the network it's completely untrained but as samples flow in the ANN is trained and converges.
The ANN will be used to classify a set of values and the implementation would visualize how the training of the ANN gets improved as samples flows through the system. I.e. each sample is used for training and then also evaluated by the ANN and the response is visualized.
The effect that I expect is that for the very first samples the response of the ANN will be more or less random but as the training progress the accuracy improves.
Any ideas are most welcome.
Regards, Ola
In MATLAB you can use the adapt function instead of train. You can do this incrementally (change weights every time you get a new piece of information) or you can do it every N-samples, batch-style.
This document gives an in-depth run-down on the different styles of training from the perspective of a time-series problem.
I'd really think about what you're trying to do here, because adaptive learning strategies can be difficult. I found that they like to flail all over compared to their batch counterparts. This was especially true in my case where I work with very noisy signals.
Are you sure that you need adaptive learning? You can't periodically re-train your NN? Or build one that generalizes well enough?

Neuroph Vs Encog

I have decided to use a feed-forward NN with back-propagation training for my OCR application for Handwritten text and the input layer is going to be with 32*32 (1024) neurones and at least 8-12 out put neurones.
I found Neuroph easy to use by reading some articles at the same time Encog is few times better in performance. Considering the parameters in my scenario which API is the most suitable one. And I appreciate if u can comment on the number of input nodes i have taken, is it too large value (Although it is out of the topic)
First my disclaimer, I am one of the main developers on the Encog project. This means I am more familiar with Encog that Neuroph and perhaps biased towards it. In my opinion, the relative strengths of each are as follows. Encog supports quite a few interchangeable machine learning methods and training methods. Neuroph is VERY focused on neural networks and you can express a connection between just about anything. So if you are going to create very custom/non-standard (research) neural networks of different typologies than the typical Elman/Jordan, NEAT, HyperNEAT, Feedforward type networks, then Neuroph will fit the bill nicely.

Optimization of Neural Network input data

I'm trying to build an app to detect images which are advertisements from the webpages. Once I detect those I`ll not be allowing those to be displayed on the client side.
Basically I'm using Back-propagation algorithm to train the neural network using the dataset given here: http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Internet+Advertisements.
But in that dataset no. of attributes are very high. In fact one of the mentors of the project told me that If you train the Neural Network with that many attributes, it'll take lots of time to get trained. So is there a way to optimize the input dataset? Or I just have to use that many attributes?
1558 is actually a modest number of features/attributes. The # of instances(3279) is also small. The problem is not on the dataset side, but on the training algorithm side.
ANN is slow in training, I'd suggest you to use a logistic regression or svm. Both of them are very fast to train. Especially, svm has a lot of fast algorithms.
In this dataset, you are actually analyzing text, but not image. I think a linear family classifier, i.e. logistic regression or svm, is better for your job.
If you are using for production and you cannot use open source code. Logistic regression is very easy to implement compared to a good ANN and SVM.
If you decide to use logistic regression or SVM, I can future recommend some articles or source code for you to refer.
If you're actually using a backpropagation network with 1558 input nodes and only 3279 samples, then the training time is the least of your problems: Even if you have a very small network with only one hidden layer containing 10 neurons, you have 1558*10 weights between the input layer and the hidden layer. How can you expect to get a good estimate for 15580 degrees of freedom from only 3279 samples? (And that simple calculation doesn't even take the "curse of dimensionality" into account)
You have to analyze your data to find out how to optimize it. Try to understand your input data: Which (tuples of) features are (jointly) statistically significant? (use standard statistical methods for this) Are some features redundant? (Principal component analysis is a good stating point for this.) Don't expect the artificial neural network to do that work for you.
Also: remeber Duda&Hart's famous "no-free-lunch-theorem": No classification algorithm works for every problem. And for any classification algorithm X, there is a problem where flipping a coin leads to better results than X. If you take this into account, deciding what algorithm to use before analyzing your data might not be a smart idea. You might well have picked the algorithm that actually performs worse than blind guessing on your specific problem! (By the way: Duda&Hart&Storks's book about pattern classification is a great starting point to learn about this, if you haven't read it yet.)
aplly a seperate ANN for each category of features
for example
457 inputs 1 output for url terms ( ANN1 )
495 inputs 1 output for origurl ( ANN2 )
...
then train all of them
use another main ANN to join results