A diffusion-neural-network for learning from small samples

Neural information processing models largely assume that the patterns for training a neural network are sufficient. Otherwise, there must exist a non-negligible error between the real function and the estimated function from a trained network. To reduce the error, in this paper, we suggest a diffusion-neural-network (DNN) to learn from a small sample consisting of only a few patterns. A DNN with more nodes in the input and layers is trained by using the deriving patterns instead of original patterns. In this paper, we give an example to show how to construct a DNN for recognizing a non-linear function. In our case, the DNN's error is less than the error of the conventional BP network, about 48%. To substantiate the special case arguments, we also study other two non-linear functions with simulation technology. The results show that the DNN model is very effective in the case where the target function has a strong non-linearity or a given sample is very small. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.