Help for a NOAA connectionist "primer"

[Michael C. Mozer]

Your boss is basically correct.  Neural net algorithms just let you
do a lot of the same things that traditional statistical algorithms allow
you to do, but they are more accessible to many people (and perhaps
easier to use).

There is a growing set of examples where neural nets beat out conventional
algorithms, but nothing terribly impressive.  And it's difficult to
tell in these examples whether the conventional methods were applied
appropriately (or the NN algorithm in cases where NNs lose to
conventional methods for that matter).  

Mike