Plain-English tutorial on artificial neural networks?

Posted by Stuart on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Stuart
Published on 2010-04-09T16:02:08Z Indexed on 2010/04/09 16:03 UTC
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neural-network

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artificial-neural-network

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java

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tutorial

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tutorials

I've Googled, StackOverflowed, everything, and I cannot seem to find a tutorial I can understand. I understand the concept of genetic algorithms, and how to implement them, (Though I haven't tried) but I cannot grasp the concept of neural networks.

I know vaguely how they work... And that's about it. Could someone direct me to a tutorial that could help someone who has not even graduated middle school yet? Sure, I'm several years ahead of the majority of people my grade, but I don't understand summation, (which I apparently need if I don't want a simple binary output) vectors, and other things that I apparently should know.

Is there a simple, bare-bones tutorial for neural networks? After I learn the basics, I'll proceed to more difficult ones. Preferably, they would be in Java.

Thanks!

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