Trainer

The Trainer makes it easier to train any set to any network, no matter its architecture. To create a trainer you just have to provide a Network to train.

var trainer = new Trainer(myNetwork);

The trainer also contains built-in tasks to test the performance of your network.

train

This method allows you to train any training set to a Network, the training set must be an Array containing object with an input and an output property, for example, this is how you train an XOR to a network using a trainer:

var myNetwork = new Architect.Perceptron(2, 2, 1)
var trainer = new Trainer(myNetwork)

var trainingSet = [
  {
    input: [0,0],
    output: [0]
  },
  {
    input: [0,1],
    output: [1]
  },
  {
    input: [1,0],
    output: [1]
  },
  {
    input: [1,1],
    output: [0]
  },
]

trainer.train(trainingSet);

You can also set different options for the training in an object as a second parameter, like:

trainer.train(trainingSet,{
	rate: .1,
	iterations: 20000,
	error: .005,
	shuffle: true,
	log: 1000,
	cost: Trainer.cost.CROSS_ENTROPY
});

Options

• rate: learning rate to train the network. It can be a static rate (just a number), dynamic (an array of numbers, which will transition from one to the next one according to the number of iterations) or a callback function: (iterations, error) => rate.
• iterations: maximum number of iterations
• error: minimum error
• shuffle: if true, the training set is shuffled after every iteration, this is useful for training data sequences which order is not meaningful to networks with context memory, like LSTM's.
• cost: you can set what cost function to use for the training, there are three built-in cost functions (Trainer.cost.CROSS_ENTROPY, Trainer.cost.MSE and Trainer.cost.BINARY) to choose from cross-entropy or mean squared error. You can also use you own cost function(targetValues, outputValues).
• log: this commands the trainer to console.log the error and iterations every X number of iterations.
• schedule: you can create custom scheduled tasks that will be executed every X number of iterations. It can be used to create custom logs, or to compute analytics based on the data passed to the task (data object includes error, iterations and the current learning rate). If the returned value of the task is true, the training will be aborted. This can be used to create special conditions to stop the training (i.e. if the error starts to increase).

schedule: {
	every: 500, // repeat this task every 500 iterations
	do: function(data) {
		// custom log
		console.log("error", data.error, "iterations", data.iterations, "rate", data.rate);
		if (someCondition)
			return true; // abort/stop training
	}
}

When the training is done this method returns an object with the error, the iterations, and the elapsed time of the training.

trainAsync

This method works the same way as train, but it uses a WebWorker so the training doesn't affect the user interface (a really long training using the train method might freeze the UI on the browser, but that doesn't happen using trainAsync). This method doesn't work in node.js, and it might not work on every browser (it has to support Blob and WebWorker's).

var trainer = new Trainer(myNetwork);
trainer.trainAsync(set, options)
.then(results => console.log('done!', results)

It has the same signature and supports the same options as train, but instead of returning the training results it returns a Promise that resolves to the training results

This is an example of how to train an XOR using the method trainAsync:

var myNetwork = new Architect.Perceptron(2, 2, 1)
var trainer = new Trainer(myNetwork)

var trainingSet = [
  {
    input: [0,0],
    output: [0]
  },
  {
    input: [0,1],
    output: [1]
  },
  {
    input: [1,0],
    output: [1]
  },
  {
    input: [1,1],
    output: [0]
  },
]

trainer.trainAsync(trainingSet)
.then(results => console.log('done!', results))

test

This method accepts the same arguments as train(dataSet, options). It will iterate over the dataSet, activating the network. It returns the elapsed time and the error (by default, the MSE, but you can specify the cost function in the options, same way as in train()).

XOR

This method trains an XOR to the network, is useful when you are experimenting with different architectures and you want to test and compare their performances:

var trainer = new Trainer(myNetwork);
trainer.XOR(); // {error: 0.004999821588193305, iterations: 21333, time: 111}

DSR

This method trains the network to complete a Discrete Sequence Recall, which is a task for testing context memory in neural networks.

trainer.DSR({
	targets: [2,4],
	distractors: [3,5],
	prompts: [0,1],	
	length: 10	
});

ERG

This method trains the network to pass an Embedded Reber Grammar test.

trainer.ERG();

timingTask

This test challenges the network to complete a timing task.