Statistical Mechanics, Neural Networks, & Artificial Intelligence

Book Status Report

Chapter Uploads (Friday, Jan. 10, 2020)

• Chapter 9 (DRAFT): The Hopfield Neural Network and the (Restricted) Boltzmann Machine – uploaded; minor tweaks to the original version from last May; still in developmental status
• Chapter 10 (DRAFT): Statistical Mechanics – renumbered.

Chapter Uploads (Monday, Jan. 6, 2020)

This book is in fluid state right now. I’ve just broken up the previous chapter on backpropagation into two parts, figuring that even the most sturdy souls have limited tolerance for pages-upon-pages of partial differential equations and repeated applications of the chain rule.
The new backpropagation chapters are Chapter 6 (Backpropagation Part 1) and Chapter 7 (Backpropagation Part 2).
In the meantime, I’m still working on the backpropagation chapters … intending to produce several more figures that will (1) make the whole process more visually accessible, and (2) break up that unending monotony of repeated applications of the chain rule.
My goal is to get this part, at least, done ASAP so the influx of students to the Winter Quarter for 2020 have something better to read than I’ve had for them in the past.

Table of Contents

Part 1: The Fundamentals Behind Artificial Intelligence

• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Brain-Based Strategies
• Chapter 3: Representation Levels

Part 2: Simple Neural Networks and Stochastic Gradient Descent

• Chapter 4: Constructing a Simple Neural Network (Multilayer Perceptron). Coming Soon: Link to YouTube Resources
• Chapter 5: Neural Network Microstructures: The Transfer Function. Link to Chapter 5 draft and YouTube vid.
• Chapter 6: Backpropagation Part 1: Dependence of the SSE on the Hidden-to-Output Connection Weights. Link to Chapter 6 draft.
• Chapter 7: Backpropagation Part 2: Dependence of the SSE on the Input-to-Hidden Connection Weights. Link to Chapter 7 draft.
• Chapter 8: Neural Network Mesostructures: Fundamentals of Good Neural Network Design

Part 3: Energy-Based Neural Networks and the Foundations of Deep Learning

• Chapter 9: The Hopfield and Boltzmann Machine Neural Networks. Link to Chapter 9 draft.
• Chapter 10: Statistical Mechanics – the Gentlest Possible Introduction. Link to Chapter 10 draft and slidedecks.