CIS 479 Assignment 4
                          Winter 1997

     Your final assignment will be a neural network project. In 
this assignment you are to develop a neural network which handles 
some classification, diagnostic, or predictive task. The number 
of neurons involved will vary according to your choice of 
application. I would suggest that you try to identify an 
application with 6 to 10 variables, has around 30 training cases, 
and 5 or so test cases. You may work in groups or 2 or 3, if you 
select a sufficiently rich application. If you work in a group 
each person is to be assigned a percentage grade (indicating 
contribution to total project by each group member).

      Examples, might be computer system selection based on 
desired component attributes or diagnosing common microcomputer 
system problems. You might decide to examine your MP4 expert 
system project or try to predict the NBA playoffs (or the outcome 
of the recent NCAA tournament). You might try to diagnose 
diseases, recognize characters, or select game moves.

     You may implement your system using Brainmaker, Neuralworks, 
or any other neural net tool you may have access to. You may 
develop a system from scratch using Lisp (C or Pascal), or some 
other language. I would suggest using Netmaker to build your 
initial network definition file and then use Brainmaker to train 
and test your network.

     Chapter 14 in the Tanimoto text contains some comments on 
the theoretical basis for neural networks. The documentation for 
Brainmaker (and Netmaker) is in the CW Micro Lab. Sample network 
definition files are on the Novell network. Prior to beginning 
the design of a neural network, you should identify a domain 
expert or some printed source for the facts used to train and 
test your network. You will need to provide some evidence that 
your network does in fact perform correctly.

     To be sure things don't get stuck in the problem selection 
phase, I would like you to give me a written note 1 week from 
today describing your problem and indicating the members of your 
group (if any). You are free to change problems, but you will 
need to have me approve your new problem. You may not to drop out 
of a group once you make the commitment to work with other 
people.

     You will need to turn in an annotated file listings for your 
network, your training fact sets, and your test facts. I will 
need to see whatever hardcopy you are able to generate 
documenting the results of your training activities and the test 
data runs. I will also need a 3 to 4 page memo discussing the 
organization of your network, the variables involved, the source 
of the facts processed by your network, and the length of the 
training process. Your work is due at our last class period on 
Tuesday, April 22nd. No late work will be accepted after our 
final exam on April 24th.