Impact of Additional Hidden Layers and Neurons

This section provides a tutorial example to show the impact of additional hidden layers and additional neurons on a simple neural network model created on Deep Playground.

After looked at the impact of extra input features, let's now look at the impact of extra layers and extra neurons (nodes) in this tutorial.

1. Continue withe previous tutorial of a 1-layer model with linear activation function on the linear classification problem.

2. Add 3 hidden layers with 1 neuron in each hidden layer.

3. Play with different initial weight matrices. It will take less than 10 epochs to get the stabilized state, when "Training loss" reaches 0.00. One example is shown below. It is interesting to see that the output of the first hidden layer is already a good solution by looking at its color pattern. But the second hidden layer gives a completely opposite solution with a negative weight. The opposite solution is passed to the third hidden layer with a positive weight. It finally reversed back to the correct solution in the output layer with a negative weight.

Deep Playground - Simple Model with 3 Single-Neuron Hidden Layers
Deep Playground - Simple Model with 3 Single-Neuron Hidden Layers

As you can see, single-neuron hidden layers provides no help the model, since they can only change signs of the output or scale it. So don't any single-neuron hidden layer in a neuron network. It's a waste of resource.

4. Expand all 3 hidden layers with 2 neurons in each hidden layer.

5. Play with different initial weight matrices. It will take less than 10 epochs to get the stabilized state. You will get different stabilized weight matrices with different initial values. Two examples are shown below.

Deep Playground - Simple Model with 3 Double-Neuron Hidden Layers
Deep Playground - Simple Model with 3 Double-Neuron Hidden Layers

As you can see, additional neurons in the hidden layer create more possible combinations of weight matrices to solve this simple linear problem.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

Deep Playground for Classical Neural Networks

 What Is Deep Playground

 Simple Model in Playground

 Impact of Extra Input Features

Impact of Additional Hidden Layers and Neurons

 Complex Model in Playground

 Impact of Training Set Size

 Impact of Neural Network Configuration

 Impact of Learning Rate

 Impact of Activation Functions

 Building Neural Networks with Python

 Simple Example of Neural Networks

 TensorFlow - Machine Learning Platform

 PyTorch - Machine Learning Platform

 Gradio - ML Demo Platform

 CNN (Convolutional Neural Network)

 RNN (Recurrent Neural Network)

 GNN (Graph Neural Network)

 GAN (Generative Adversarial Network)

 Performance Evaluation Metrics

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB