Re:Neural Networks making a come-back?
by nivertech on Sunday May 01, 2011 @04:45PM
(#2504037)
Is this the same as non-parametric learning?
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No, non-parametric learning is an unrelated topic, which seeks to estimate probability distributions without using "parametric" (= having known structure) models. The canonical example of a non-parametric approach is using histograms, or their generalization, called Parzen Windows.
That's an orthogonal distinction. The methods thus far have typically been parametric, in that there's a fixed network topology and the learning algorithm adjusts the (fixed set of) weights on the edges. There's no reason, though, why you couldn't have a nonparametric version that adaptively chose the number of hidden nodes in the networks and the connectivity structure.