Neural Networks: A Primer

Neural network technology has recently demonstrated capabilities in areas important to personnel research such as statistical analysis, decision modeling, control, and forecasting. This paper is an introduction to neural network terminology, definitions, capabilities, and applications. It provides a discussion of traditionally used statistical methods and compares them to neural network architectures. The benefits of using neural networks is their ability to derive nonlinear and interacting relationship among variables of a model. This paper is designed for individuals who have little or no knowledge of this growing field.