I've been trying to learn about Neural Networks for a while now, and I can understand some basic tutorials online, and I've been able to get through portions of Neural Computing - An Introduction but even there, I'm glazing over a lot of the math, and it becomes completely over my head after the first few chapters. Even then its the least book "math-y" I can find.
Its not that I'm afraid of the math or anything, its just I haven't learned what I need, and I'm not sure what I need exactly. I'm currently enrolled at my local university, working on catching up on classes I need to enter the MS in Comp. Sci program (my BA is in Business/Info. Sys.) and I haven't gotten very far. According to the university's little course descriptions, NN's are actually covered in a Electrical Engineering course on Pattern Recognition (seems odd to me that this course is EE), which has a few EE prereq's that I don't need to get into the MS Comp. Sci. Program.
I'm extremely interested in this topic, and know I eventually want to learn a lot more about it, the problem is, I don't know what I need to know first. Here are topics I think I might need, but this is just speculation from ignorance:
- Single Variable Calculus (I've had Calc I and II, so I think I'm covered here, just listing for completeness)
- Multi Variable Calculus
- Linear Algebra (I've not taken this formally yet, but can actually understand many of the concepts from what I've managed to grok on Wikipedia and other sites)
- Discrete Mathematics (Another I've not taken formally, but learned a portion of on my own
- Graph Theory
- Probability Theory
- Bayesian Statistics
- Circuit Design
- Other maths?
- Other comp sci topics
Obviously there is a neuroscience component here as well, but I actually h