Neural networks by function examples -- how to get feeling of it?

I am looking fo开发者_StackOverflowr recommended books (or other materials, like web pages) which demonstrate such examples -- structure of neural network (artificial) for given function.

I.e. what is the best (in sense, of being minimalistic, yet correct) network structure for function min with N arguments. Or for function abs. And so on.

The reason for my question (what books do you recommend?) is I would like to get proper "feeling" how to shape the network to get the desired effect without overkill having dense network which computes correctly, but very inefficiently.

There is no such thing as "the best NN structure". If you are lucky, you will find a structure that does the job, but that doesn't mean that that structure is the "best".

I highly recommend you reading Programming Collective Intelligence by Toby Segaran. This book has a chapter on neural network. It explains many other artificial intelligence algorithms in a clear and concise way.

You may find additional wide reviews on neural networks here and here

There is a lecture course on iTunes-U called "Informatics for Nursing" that contains several lectures dedicated to ANN's

UPDATE June 2019: the iTunes-U course is no longer available and I couldn't find it elsewhere

Good luck