From lpratt@slate.mines.colorado.edu Tue Oct 12 16:42:08 EDT 1993 Article: 12707 of comp.ai.neural-nets Xref: crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.neural-nets:12707 comp.ai.edu:1369 Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets,comp.ai.edu,csm.local,csm.mathcs.general Path: crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu!honeydew.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!noc.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!sdd.hp.com!col.hp.com!csn!slate!lpratt From: lpratt@slate.mines.colorado.edu (Lorien Pratt) Subject: Announcing availalility of Motif-based neural network animator Message-ID: <1993Oct11.174759.60727@slate.mines.colorado.edu> Sender: lpratt@slate.mines.colorado.edu (Lorien Pratt) Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 17:47:59 GMT Organization: Colorado School of Mines Lines: 115 ----------------------------------- Announcing the availability of an X-based neural network hyperplane animator Version 1.01 October 10, 1993 ----------------------------------- Lori Pratt and Steve Nicodemus Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences Colorado School of Mines Golden, CO 80401 USA lpratt@mines.colorado.edu Understanding neural network behavior is an important goal of many research efforts. Although several projects have sought to translate neural network weights into symbolic representations, an alternative approach is to understand trained networks graphically. Many researchers have used a display of hyperplanes defined by the weights in a single layer of a back-propagation neural network. In contrast to some network visualization schemes, this approach shows both the training data and the network parameters that attempt to fit those data. At NIPS 1990, Paul Munro presented a video which demonstrated the dynamics of hyperplanes as a network changes during learning. The program displayed ran on a Stardent 4000 graphics engine, and was implemented at Siemens. At NIPS 1991, we demonstrated an X-based hyperplane animator, similar in appearance to Paul Munro's, but with extensions to allow for interaction during training. The user may speed up, slow down, or freeze animation, and set various other parameters. Also, since it runs under X, this program should be more generally usable. An openwindows version of this program was made available to the public domain in 1992. This announcement describes a version of the hyperplane animator that has been rewritten for Motif. It was developed on an IBM RS/6000 platform, and so is written in ANSI C. The remainder of this message contains more details of the hyperplane animator and ftp information. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. What is the Hyperplane Animator? The Hyperplane Animator is a program that allows easy graphical display of Back-Propagation training data and weights in a Back-Propagation neural network [Rumelhart, 1987]. It implements only some of the functionality that we eventually hope to include. In particular, it only animates hyperplanes representing input-to-hidden weights. Back-Propagation neural networks consist of processing nodes interconnected by adjustable, or ``weighted'' connections. Neural network learning consists of adjusting weights in response to a set of training data. The weights w1,w2,...wn on the connections into any one node can be viewed as the coefficients in the equation of an (n-1)-dimensional plane. Each non-input node in the neural net is thus associated with its own plane. These hyperplanes are graphically portrayed by the hyperplane animator. On the same graph it also shows the training data. 2. Why use it? As learning progresses and the weights in a neural net alter, hyperplane positions move. At the end of the training they are in positions that roughly divide training data into partitions, each of which contains only one class of data. Observations of hyperplane movement can yield valuable insights into neural network learning. 3. Platform information The Animator was developed using the Motif toolkit on an IBM RS6000 with X-Windows. It appears to be stable on this platform, and has not been compiled on other platforms. However, Dec5000 and SGI workstations have been succesfully used as graphics servers for the animator. How to install the hyperplane animator: You will need a machine which has X-Windows, and the Motif libraries. 1. copy the file animator.tar.Z to your machine via ftp as follows: ftp mines.colorado.edu (138.67.1.3) Name: anonymous Password: (your ID) ftp> cd pub/software/hyperplane-animator ftp> binary ftp> get hyperplane-animator.tar ftp> quit 2. Extract files from hyperplane-animator.tar with: tar -xvf hyperplane-animator.tar 3. Read the README file there. It includes information about compiling. It also includes instructions for running a number of demonstration networks that are included with this distribution. DISCLAIMER: This software is distributed as shareware, and comes with no warantees whatsoever for the software itself or systems that include it. The authors deny responsibility for errors, misstatements, or omissions that may or may not lead to injuries or loss of property. This code may not be sold for profit, but may be distributed and copied free of charge as long as the credits window, copyright statement in the program, and this notice remain intact. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- L. Y. Pratt Dept. of Math and Computer Science lpratt@franklinite.mines.colorado.edu Colorado School of Mines (303) 273-3878 (work) 402 Stratton (303) 278-4552 (home) Golden, CO 80401, USA