R help - Sep 2003 - NNet value and convergence

Hi,  

I'm using the R nnet package and have a few simple (?) questions.  

What is the "value " that is output after every 10 iterations during
the training of the network and how is it calculated?

# weights:  177
initial  value 506.134586 
iter  10 value 128.222774
iter  20 value 95.399782
iter  30 value 87.184564
...

Is the "value" the error, if not, is there any way to see the error
values during training?

Also, how does the network decide when it has converged?  

Thanks

Hannah 

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Hannah Wood wrote:
> Hi,  
> 
> I'm using the R nnet package and have a few simple (?) questions.  
> 
> What is the "value " that is output after every 10 iterations
during the training of the network and how is it calculated?
> 
> # weights:  177
> initial  value 506.134586 
> iter  10 value 128.222774
> iter  20 value 95.399782
> iter  30 value 87.184564
> ...
> 
> Is the "value" the error, if not, is there any way to see the
error values during training?
 From ?nnet:
"value of fitting criterion plus weight decay term."

> Also, how does the network decide when it has converged?  
More than one criterion. You can adjust the criterions with arguments to 
nnet(), see ?nnet.

Please read the references given in ?nnet for more details:

- Ripley, B. D. (1996) Pattern Recognition and Neural Networks. Cambridge.
- Venables, W. N. and Ripley, B. D. (2002) Modern Applied Statistics 
with S. Fourth edition. Springer.


Uwe Ligges

> Thanks
> 
> Hannah