As we anticipated before, the concept of the perceptron is inspired by the biological neuron, and its main function is to decide to block or let a signal pass. Neurons receive a set of binary input, created by electrical signals. If the total signal surpasses a certain threshold, the neuron fires an output.
A perceptron does the same, as we can see in the following diagram:
It can receive multiple pieces of input, and this input is then multiplied by a set of weights. The sum of the weighted signal will then pass through an activation function—in this case, a step function. If the total signal is greater than a certain threshold, the perceptron will either let the signal pass, or not. We can represent this mathematically with the following formula:
This is the mathematical model for a neuron, represented as an explicit sum and as a matrix operation. The...
