Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!warwick!esrmm From: esrmm@warwick.ac.uk (Denis Anthony) Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets Subject: Re: Several hidden layers in feed-forward networks Message-ID: <1991Jan8.091631.16219@warwick.ac.uk> Date: 8 Jan 91 09:16:31 GMT References: <7165.27885d62@abo.fi> <1991Jan7.202202.12266@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> Sender: news@warwick.ac.uk (Network news) Organization: Computing Services, Warwick University, UK Lines: 16 In article <1991Jan7.202202.12266@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> aam9n@helga0.acc.Virginia.EDU (Ali Ahmad Minai) writes: >In article <7165.27885d62@abo.fi> vt_ai@abo.fi writes: > >As for why more layers work "better", they often don't. But when they >do, it is because of the greater potential "complexity" available. >Think of each neuron in layer k as forming a distorted linear >superposition of the outputs from the previous layer. If the neurons >in the net have monotonic activation functions, as they usually do, >an output layer neuron in a single hidden-layer net requires about 2n >hidden neurons to compose a function with n modes (peaks). Why 2n ? Is this emprical, or based on maths ? Or is it obvious, ie. 2n to form n peaks and n troughs. Apologies if I am being a bit dim. Denis