Benefits and limitations
The advantages and disadvantages of neural networks depend on which other machine learning methods they are compared to. However, neural-network-based classifiers, particularly the multilayer perceptron using the error backpropagation, have some obvious advantages, which are as follows:
The mathematical foundation of a neural network does not require expertise in dynamic programming or linear algebra, beyond the basic gradient descent algorithm.
A neural network can perform tasks that a linear algorithm cannot.
An MLP is usually reliable for highly dynamic and nonlinear processes. Contrary to the support vector machines, they do not require us to increase the problem dimension through kernelization.
An MLP does not make any assumption on linearity, variable independence, or normality.
The execution of training of an MLP lends itself to concurrent processing quite well for online training. In most architecture, the algorithm can continue even if a node in the network fails...
