Encog Presentation at Gateway Java Users Group (St. Louis)

On Tuesday, June 2, 2009 I will do a presentation on Encog at the Gateway Java Users Group in St. Louis, MO at 6:00 PM. The information on this presentation can be found here. I will post the material for this presentation online after I complete it.

Implementing a Java Neural Network with the Encog Framework

The Encog Artificial Intelligence Framework (http://www.encog.org) is a Java and DotNet framework for constructing neural networks, bots, genetic algorithms, and other artificial intelligence solutions. Encog is an open source project licensed under the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL).

This presentation will focus on using Encog to implement a neural network. Neural networks are used to analyze numeric data. They are particularly adept at recognizing patterns. This allows neural networks to be applied to a wide array of problems, such as data mining, financial forecasting, optical character recognition and game strategy.

This presentation will begin by showing exactly what a neural network is, and how it can be used. The Java code used to implement a neural network to recognize simple mathematical functions will be used as a starting point. From this starting point, the simple neural network will be expanded to look for patterns in financial data and demonstrate a more “real world” application of neural networks.

Jeff Heaton (http://www.jeffheaton.com) is a software developer for Reinsurance Group of America. He is an author, consultant, artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and former college instructor. Heaton has penned more than a dozen books on topics including AI, virtual worlds, spiders and bots. Heaton leads the Encog project, an open source initiative to provide an advanced neural network and bot framework for Java and C#. A Sun Certified Java Programmer and a Senior Member of the IEEE, he holds a Masters Degree in Information Management from Washington University in St. Louis. Heaton lives in St. Louis, Missouri.