How to set some weights in a layer to a particulr number? - neural-network

I would like to ask if it is possible to set some weights in a layer to particular number or zero of pretrained model.
For example, I want to download Lecun model and set some weights in the last layer to number e.x 4 and calculate the accuracy.
How can I do that?

You are after "net surgery". In python you can load the net and get direct access to the stored weights. Then you can tweak them as you pleased and save the modified net.

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Choice of Neural Network and Activation Function

I am very new to the field of Neural Network. Apologies, if this question is very amateurish.
I am looking to build a neural network model to predict whether a particular image that I am about to post on a social media platform will get a certain engagement rate.
I have around 120 images with historical data about the engagement rate. The following information is available:
Images of size 501 px x 501 px
Type of image (Exterior photoshoot/Interior photoshoot)
Day of posting the image (Sunday/Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday/Saturday)
Time of posting the image (18:33, 10:13, 19:36 etc)
No. of people who have seen the post (15659, 35754, 25312 etc)
Engagement rate (5.22%, 3.12%, 2.63% etc)
I would like the model to predict if a certain image when posted on a particular day and time will give an engagement rate of 3% or more.
As you may have noticed, the input data is images, text (signifying what type or day), time and numbers.
Could you please help me understand how to build a neural network for this problem?
P.S: I am very new to this field. It would be great if you can give a detailed direction how I should proceed to solve this problem.
A neural network has three kinds of neuronal layers:
Input layer. It stores the inputs this network will receive. The number of neurons must equal the number of inputs you have;
Hidden layer. It uses the inputs that come from the previous layer and it does the necessary calculations so as to obtain a result, which passes to the output layer. More complex problems may require more than one hidden layer. As far as I know, there is not an algorithm to determine the number of neurons in this layer, so I think you determine this number based on trial and error and previous experience;
Output layer. It gets the results from the hidden layer and gives it to the user for his personal use. The number of neurons from the output layer equals the number of outputs you have.
According to what you write here, your training database has 6 inputs and one output (the engagement rate). This means that your artificial neural network (ANN) will have 6 neurons on the input layer and one neuron on the output layer.
I not sure if you can pass images as inputs to a neural network. Also, because in theory there are an infinite types of images, I think you should categorize them a bit, each category receiving a number. An example of categorization would be:
Images with dogs are in category 1;
Images with hospitals are in category 2, etc.
So, your inputs will look like this:
Image category (dogs=1, hospitals=2, etc.);
Type of image (Exterior photoshoot=1, interior photoshoot=2);
Posting day (Sunday=1, Monday=2, etc.);
Time of posting the image;
Number of people who have seen the post;
Engagement rate.
The number of hidden layers and the number of each neuron from each hidden layer depends on your problem's complexity. Having 120 pictures, I think one hidden layer and 10 neurons on this layer is enough.
The ANN will have one hidden layer (the engagement rate).
Once the database containing the information about the 120 pictures is created (known as training database) is created, the next step is to train the ANN using the database. However, there is some discussion here.
Training an ANN means computing some parameters of the hidden neurons by using an optimization algorithm so as the sum of squared errors is minimum. The training process has some degree of randomness to it. To minimize the effect of the randomness factor and to get as precise estimations as possible, your training database must have:
Consistent data;
Many records;
I don't know how consistent your data are, but from my experience, a small training database with consistent data beats a huge database with non-consistent ones.
Judging by the problem, I think you should use the default activation function provided by the software you use for ANN handling.
Once you have trained your database, it is time to see how efficient this training was. The software which you use for ANN should provide you with tools to estimate this, tools which should be documented. If training is satisfactory for you, you may begin using it. If it is not, you may either re-train the ANN or use a larger database.

Concept of validate for neural network

I have a problem with concept of Validation for NN. suppose I have 100 set of input variables (for example 8 input, X1,...,X8) and want to predict one Target(Y). now I have two ways to use NN:
1- use 70 set of data for training NN and then use trained NN to predict other 30 sets of Target for validation and then plot output VS Target for this 30 sets as validation plot.
2- use 100 sets of data for training NN and then divide all outputs to two part (70% and 30%). plot 70% of outputs VS corresponding Targets as Training plot. then plot other 30% outputs VS their corresponding Targets as validation plot
Which one is correct??
Also, what the difference between checking NN with new data set and validation data set??
Thanks
You cannot use data for validation, if it has been already used for the training, because the trained NN will already "know" your validation examples. The result of such validation will be very biased. I would for sure use the first way.

How to use created "net" neural network object for prediction?

I used ntstool to create NAR (nonlinear Autoregressive) net object, by training on a 1x1247 input vector. (daily stock price for 6 years)
I have finished all the steps and saved the resulting net object to workspace.
Now I am clueless on how to use this object to predict the y(t) for example t = 2000, (I trained the model for t = 1:1247)
In some other threads, people recommended to use sim(net, t) function - however this will give me the same result for any value of t. (same with net(t) function)
I am not familiar with the specific neural net commands, but I think you are approaching this problem in the wrong way. Typically you want to model the evolution in time. You do this by specifying a certain window, say 3 months.
What you are training now is a single input vector, which has no information about evolution in time. The reason you always get the same prediction is because you only used a single point for training (even though it is 1247 dimensional, it is still 1 point).
You probably want to make input vectors of this nature (for simplicity, assume you are working with months):
[month1 month2; month2 month 3; month3 month4]
This example contains 2 training points with the evolution of 3 months. Note that they overlap.
Use the Network
After the network is trained and validated, the network object can be used to calculate the network response to any input. For example, if you want to find the network response to the fifth input vector in the building data set, you can use the following
a = net(houseInputs(:,5))
a =
34.3922
If you try this command, your output might be different, depending on the state of your random number generator when the network was initialized. Below, the network object is called to calculate the outputs for a concurrent set of all the input vectors in the housing data set. This is the batch mode form of simulation, in which all the input vectors are placed in one matrix. This is much more efficient than presenting the vectors one at a time.
a = net(houseInputs);
Each time a neural network is trained, can result in a different solution due to different initial weight and bias values and different divisions of data into training, validation, and test sets. As a result, different neural networks trained on the same problem can give different outputs for the same input. To ensure that a neural network of good accuracy has been found, retrain several times.
There are several other techniques for improving upon initial solutions if higher accuracy is desired. For more information, see Improve Neural Network Generalization and Avoid Overfitting.
strong text

ANN different results for same train-test sets

I'm implementing a neural network for a supervised classification task in MATLAB.
I have a training set and a test set to evaluate the results.
The problem is that every time I train the network for the same training set I get very different results (sometimes I get a 95% classification accuracy and sometimes like 60%) for the same test set.
Now I know this is because I get different initial weights and I know that I can use 'seed' to set the same initial weights but the question is what does this say about my data and what is the right way to look at this? How do I define the accuracy I'm getting using my designed ANN? Is there a protocol for this (like running the ANN 50 times and get an average accuracy or something)?
Thanks
Make sure your test set is large enough compared to the training set (e.g. 10% of the overall data) and check it regarding diversity. If your test set only covers very specific cases, this could be a reason. Also make sure you always use the same test set. Alternatively you should google the term cross-validation.
Furthermore, observing good training set accuracy while observing bad test set accuracy is a sign for overfitting. Try to apply regularization like a simple L2 weight decay (simply multiply your weight matrices with e.g. 0.999 after each weight update). Depending on your data, Dropout or L1 regularization could also help (especially if you have a lot of redundancies in your input data). Also try to choose a smaller network topology (fewer layers and/or fewer neurons per layer).
To speed up training, you could also try alternative learning algorithms like RPROP+, RPROP- or RMSProp instead of plain backpropagation.
Looks like your ANN is not converging to the optimal set of weights. Without further details of the ANN model, I cannot pinpoint the problem, but I would try increasing the number of iterations.

Artificial Neural Networks: Choosing initial neurons

How is the initial structure (Neurons and connections between them) chosen? My book only states that we give the connection random weights in the beginning before we train the network.
I think that we would add neurons during the training like this:
Start with a completely empty network
The first value I generate during the training will not exist
Add a neuron to correspond to this value, with a random weight
What you are after is a self-organizing ANN. Usually, the way the connections are organized is man-made into a model that the developer thinks will have sufficient power to perform the computation neccessary. You can of course start with a random selection of nodes with random connections, but the evolution of such a network will probably take a lot longer time than a standard two or three layer network.
So, yes, you are right in that you would use a similar approach when doing a self-organizing network. Keep track of two sets of genetic algorithms, one for the structure and one for the weights (or combine the two in some devious way) and evolve as you please.
I do not believe the question is about self-organising or GA-evolved ANNs. It sounds more like it is about a the most common ANN: a perceptron (single or multi-layer), in which case the structure of the network: the number of layers and the size of the layers, must be hand chosen at the beginning. A simple initial rule of thumb for initialising the weight is simply picking uniformly random values between -1.0 and 1.0.