CODEWITHSUNDEEP
artificial-intelligenceneural-network
Sherlock
Sherlock

Reputation: 5627

Neural network inputs

I don't really know how to word this question so bear with me..

Let's say I am developing a neural network for rating each runner in an athletics race. I give the neural network information regarding the runner, eg. win%, days since last run etc. etc.

My question is - in this case where the neural network is rating runners, can I give the network an input like the race weather ? e.g. I give the network 1.00 for hot, 2.00 for cold, 3.00 for OK .. ?

The reason I am asking this question: The greater the output of the neural network, the better the runner. So, this means that the higher the win % input, the bigger the rating. If I give the neural network inputs whereby the greater the value doesn't necessarily mean the better the runner, will the network be able to understand and use/interpret this input?

Please let me know if the question doesn't make sense!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2116

Answers (2)

Larry OBrien
Larry OBrien

Reputation: 8606

Neural nets can correctly model irrelevant inputs (by assigning them low weights) and inputs that are inversely related to the desired output (by assigning negative weights). Neural nets do better with inputs that are continuously-varying, so your example of 1.00 for hot, 2.00 for cold, 3.00 for OK .. is not ideal: better would be 0.00 for hot, 1.00 for OK, 2.00 for cool.

In situations such as your country code where there is no real continuous relationship, the best encoding (from a convergence standpoint) is to use a set of boolean attributes (isArgentina, isAustralia, ..., isZambia). Even without that, though, a neural net ought to be able to model an input of discrete values (i.e., if countries were relevant and if you encoded them as numbers, eventually a neural net should be able to converge on 87 (Kenya) is correlated with high performance). In such a situation, it might take more hidden nodes or a longer training period.

The whole point of neural nets is to use them in situations where simple statistical analysis is difficult, so I disagree with the other answer that says that you should pre-judge your data.

Upvotes: 2

Niclas
Niclas

Reputation: 1230

What a neural network does is map relations between inputs and outputs. This means that you have to have some kind of objective for your neural network. Examples of such objectives could be "to predict the winner", "to predict how fast each runner will be" or to "predict the complete results from a race". Which of those examples that are plausible for you to attempt depends, of course, on what data you have available.

If you have a large dataset (say e.g. a few hundred races for each runner) where the resulting time and all predictory variables (including weather) are recorded and you establish that there is a relationship between weather and an individual runners performance a neural network would very well be able to map such a relationship, even if it is a different relationship for each individual runner.

Example of good weather variables to record could be sun intensity (W/m2), head wind (m/s) and temperature (deg C). Then each runners performance could be modeled using these variables and then the neural network could be used to predict a runners performance (observe that this approach would require one neural network per runner).

Upvotes: 2

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