Four Levels of Neural Network Design

There are four different levels at which the neural network software can be used. The first level is represented by the GUIs that are described in Get Started with Deep Learning Toolbox. These provide a quick way to access the power of the toolbox for many problems of function fitting, pattern recognition, clustering and time series analysis.

The second level of toolbox use is through basic command-line operations. The command-line functions use simple argument lists with intelligent default settings for function parameters. (You can override all of the default settings, for increased functionality.) This topic, and the ones that follow, concentrate on command-line operations.

The GUIs described in Getting Started can automatically generate MATLAB code files with the command-line implementation of the GUI operations. This provides a nice introduction to the use of the command-line functionality.

A third level of toolbox use is customization of the toolbox. This advanced capability allows you to create your own custom neural networks, while still having access to the full functionality of the toolbox.

The fourth level of toolbox usage is the ability to modify any of the code files contained in the toolbox. Every computational component is written in MATLAB^® code and is fully accessible.

The first level of toolbox use (through the GUIs) is described in Getting Started which also introduces command-line operations. The following topics will discuss the command-line operations in more detail. The customization of the toolbox is described in Define Shallow Neural Network Architectures.

Related Topics

• Workflow for Neural Network Design