Neural networks by function examples -- how to get feeling of it?

I am looking fo开发者_StackOverflowr recommended books (or other materials, like web pages) which demonstrate such examples -- structure of neural network (artificial) for given function.

I.e. what is the best (in sense, of being minimalistic, yet correct) network structure for function min with N arguments. Or for function abs. And so on.

The reason for my question (what books do you recommend?) is I would like to get proper "feeling" how to shape the network to get the desired effect without overkill having dense network which computes correctly, but very inefficiently.

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There is no such thing as "the best NN structure". If you are lucky, you will find a structure that does the job, but that doesn't mean that that structure is the "best".

I highly recommend you reading Programming Collective Intelligence by Toby Segaran. This book has a chapter on neural network. It explains many other artificial intelligence algorithms in a clear and concise way.

You may find additional wide reviews on neural networks here and here

There is a lecture course on iTunes-U called "Informatics for Nursing" that contains several lectures dedicated to ANN's

UPDATE June 2019: the iTunes-U course is no longer available and I couldn't find it elsewhere

Good luck