Announcement of NIPS Workshop

[Scott_Fahlman@SEF-PMAX.SLISP.CS.CMU.EDU]

The Neural Information Processing Systems Conference will be followed by a
program of workshops in Vail, Colorado on December 6 and 7, 1991.  The
following one-day workshop will be offered on December 6:


	      Constructive and Destructive Learning Algorithms

		   Workshop Leader: Scott E. Fahlman
		       School of Computer Science
		       Carnegie Mellon University
			  Pittsburgh, PA 15213
		      Internet: fahlman at cs.cmu.edu

Most existing neural network learning algorithms work by adjusting
connection weights in a fixed network.  Recently we have seen the emergence
of new learning algorithms that alter the network's topology as they learn.
Some of these algorithms start with excess connections and remove any that
are not needed; others start with a sparse network and add hidden units as
needed, sometimes in multiple layers; some algorithms do both.  These
algorithms eliminate the need to guess in advance what network topology
will best fit a given problem.  In addition, some of these algorithms claim
significant improvements in learning speed and generalization.

A successful two-day workshop on this topic was presented at the NIPS-90
conference.  A number of algorithms were presented by their authors and
were critically evaluated.  The past year has seen a great deal of
additional work in this area, so a second workshop on this topic seems
appropriate.  We will briefly review the major algorithms presented last
year.  Then we will turn to more recent developments, including both new
algorithms and experience gained in using the older ones.  Finally, we will
consider current trends and will try to identify open problems for future
research.

I would like to hear from people who are interested in presenting new
algorithms or results at this workshop.  I would particularly like to hear
from people with application results or comparative studies using
algorithms of this kind.  The tentative plan, depending on the response we
get, is allow 15-20 minutes for each presentation, with ample time for
discussion.  If you would like to present something, please send a short
description to Scott Fahlman, at the internet address listed above.

For Cascade-Correlation fans, I will be presenting a new variation called
"Cascade 2" that performs better than the original in a number of
situations, especially in problems with continuous analog outputs.