How to build your own Neural Network from scratch in Python

Motivation: As part of my personal journey to gain a better understanding of Deep Learning, I've decided to build a Neural Network from scratch without a deep learning library like TensorFlow. I believe that understanding the inner workings of a Neural Network is important to any aspiring Data Scientist. This article contains what I've learned, and hopefully it'll be useful for you as well! Most introductory texts to Neural Networks brings up brain analogies when describing them. Without delving into brain analogies, I find it easier to simply describe Neural Networks as a mathematical function that maps a given input to a desired output.