Database Reference
In-Depth Information
be an athlete worth taking a hard look at. He may just be the final piece to the puzzle of bringing
Juan's franchise the championship at the end of next season.
Of course Juan must continue to use his expertise, experience and evaluation of other factors not
represented in the data sets, to make his final recommendations. For example, while all 59
prospects have some number of years experience, what if their performance statistics have all been
amassed against inferior competition? It may not be representative of their ability to perform at
the professional level. While the model and its predictions have given Juan a lot to think about, he
must still use his experience to make good recommendations to management.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
Neural networks try to mimic the human brain by using artificial 'neurons' to compare attributes to
one another and look for strong connections. By taking in attribute values, processing them, and
generating nodes connected by neurons, this data mining model can offer predictions and
confidence percentages, even amid uncertainty in some data. Neural networks are not as limited
regarding value ranges as some other methodologies.
In their graphical representation, neural nets are drawn using nodes and neurons. The thicker or
darker the line between nodes, the stronger the connection represented by that neuron. Stronger
neurons equate to a stronger ability by that attribute to predict. Although the graphical view can
be difficult to read, which can often happen when there are a larger number of attributes, the
computer is able to read the network and apply the model to scoring data in order to make
predictions. Confidence percentages can further inform the value of an observation's prediction,
as was illustrated with our hypothetical athlete Lance Goodwin in this chapter. Between the
prediction and confidence percentages, we can use neural networks to find interesting observations
that may not be obvious, but still represent good opportunities to answer questions or solve
problems.
