Deep Neural Networks As Computational Graphs – Noteworthy - The Journal Blog

Lots of people say that neural nets are a "black box" whose successful predictions are impossible to explain. I hate treating anything as a black box, it grinds against my curious nature. It's also not a very helpful mental model -- understanding what neural nets are and how they arrive at the conclusions they do can help practitioners gain insight into using them. Viewed through the proper lens, neural nets' prediction making capability makes a lot of sense. This article is about taking nets out of their black box by understanding what a neural network really represents.