Neural networks for predicting conditional probability densities: Improved training scheme combining EM and RVFL

Predicting conditional probability densities with neural networks requires complex (at least two-hidden-layer) architectures, which normally leads to rather long training times. By adopting the RVFL concept and constraining a subset of the parameters to randomly chosen initial values (such that the EM-algorithm can be applied), the training process can be accelerated by about two orders of magnitude. This allows training of a whole ensemble of networks at the same computational costs as would be required otherwise for training a single model. The simulations performed suggest that in this way a significant improvement of the generalization performance can be achieved. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.