Neural Networks are a class of models within the general machine learning literature. So for example, if you took a Coursera course on machine learning, neural networks will likely be covered. Neural networks are a specific set of algorithms that has revolutionized the field of machine learning. They are inspired by biological neural networks and the current so called deep neural networks have proven to work quite very well. Neural Networks are themselves general function approximations, that is why they can be applied to literally almost any machine learning problem where the problem is about learning a complex mapping from the input to the output space. After finishing the famous Andrew Ng's Machine Learning Coursera course, I started developing interest towards neural networks and deep learning.

Why do we need Machine Learning? Machine learning is needed for tasks that are too complex for humans to code directly. Some tasks are so complex that it is impractical, if not impossible, for humans to work out all of the nuances and code for them explicitly. So instead, we provide a large amount of data to a machine learning algorithm and let the algorithm work it out by exploring that data and searching for a model that will achieve what the programmers have set it out to achieve. Let's look at these 2 examples: Then comes the Machine Learning Approach: Instead of writing a program by hand for each specific task, we collect lots of examples that specify the correct output for a given input. A machine learning algorithm then takes these examples and produces a program that does the job.

Why do we need Machine Learning? Machine learning is needed for tasks that are too complex for humans to code directly. Some tasks are so complex that it is impractical, if not impossible, for humans to work out all of the nuances and code for them explicitly. So instead, we provide a large amount of data to a machine learning algorithm and let the algorithm work it out by exploring that data and searching for a model that will achieve what the programmers have set it out to achieve. Let's look at these 2 examples: Then comes the Machine Learning Approach: Instead of writing a program by hand for each specific task, we collect lots of examples that specify the correct output for a given input. A machine learning algorithm then takes these examples and produces a program that does the job.

Machine learning is needed for tasks that are too complex for humans to code directly. Some tasks are so complex that it is impractical, if not impossible, for humans to work out all of the nuances and code for them explicitly. So instead, we provide a large amount of data to a machine learning algorithm and let the algorithm work it out by exploring that data and searching for a model that will achieve what the programmers have set it out to achieve. Let's look at these 2 examples: Then comes the Machine Learning Approach: Instead of writing a program by hand for each specific task, we collect lots of examples that specify the correct output for a given input. A machine learning algorithm then takes these examples and produces a program that does the job. The program produced by the learning algorithm may look very different from a typical hand-written program.