Networks for pattern recognition problems?

[Ted Stockwell]

> 
> Do you know of any references to work done using connectionist (neural)
> networks for pattern recognition problems? I particularly am interested
> in problems where the network was shown to outperform traditional algorithms.
> 
> I am working on a presentation to NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric
> Admin.) management that partially involves pattern recognition
> and am trying to argue against the statement:
> "...results thus far [w/ networks] have not been notably more
> impressive than with more traditional pattern recognition techniques".
> 

This may not be quite what you're looking for, but here are a few 
suggestions:

1) Pose the question to salespeople who sell neural network software.  They
   probably have faced the question before.

2) One advantage is that the network chacterizes the classes for you.  
   Instead of spending days/weeks/months developing statistical models
   you can get a reasonable classifier by just handing the training data
   to the network and let it run overnight.  It does the work for you
   so development costs should be much lower.

3) Networks seem to be more often compared to humans than to other
   software techniques.  I don't have the referrences with me, but I 
   recall that someone (Sejnowski?) developed a classifier for sonar
   signals that performed slightly better than human experts (which *is*
   the "traditional pattern recognition technique"). 


-- 
Ted Stockwell                                     U of MN, Dept. of Astronomy
ted at aps1.spa.umn.edu                          Automated Plate Scanner Project