Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!think.com!spool.mu.edu!cs.umn.edu!mmm.serc.3m.com!news From: schultz@halley.est.3m.com (John C. Schultz) Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets Subject: Re: Neuralworks Professional II Plus Message-ID: Date: 13 May 91 14:52:33 GMT References: <1991May11.232140.24961@ncs.dnd.ca> <5690@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> Sender: news@mmm.serc.3m.com Organization: 3M Company, 3M Center, Minnesota, USA Lines: 44 In-reply-to: kcj@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au's message of 12 May 91 02:56:49 GMT In article <5690@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> kcj@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Kate Juliff) writes: In article <1991May11.232140.24961@ncs.dnd.ca> marwood@ncs.dnd.ca (Gordon Marwood) writes: >I should be interested in any opinions anyone may have on Neuralworks >Professional II Plus running under MS-DOS. A colleague of mine is >considering the acquisition of this software to assist in studies of >association of positional data, e.g. association of new data with >multiple existing tracks of previous data. I bought it and it is of no use to what I am doing at the moment. Its implementation of a Hopfield and Tank net is not standard and the description of such a net in the manual contains information which I found misleading. I have not looked in detail at the other NN models, but from a brief overview, I would say that the product is best used as an educational tool, that is using it to illustrate the different models, rather than for real applications. I disagree. I think that the NeuralWare product is most useful for applications rather than research. Previous comments that I have read in this newsgroup indicate that researchers are somewhat constrained by the limited flexibility of the underlying network model in NeuralWare. (Or they just prefer to roll their own :-) For my part, I use back propagation networks on applications (prediction, modeling) and NeuralWare works quite well. I particularly like the diagnostic tools, the ability to deduce the important input paramters, and the ability to generate run-time `C' for an on-line implementation of the network. I also think that NeuralWare has some very good personnel on their staff. I did attend the 1 week training class which I found very useful in being able to use Nworks quickly and efficiently. I can't specifically address the Hopfield and Tank network issue raised above but NeuralWare's back propagation (with options of many of the various enhancements in the technical literature) works quite well for me. I use both a Sun 3 and a MSDOS version. -- John C. Schultz EMAIL: schultz@halley.serc.3m.com 3M Company, Building 518-01-1 WRK: +1 (612) 733-4047 1865 Woodlane Drive, Dock 4, Woodbury, MN 55125 How to include the taste of Glendronach in a multi-media system?