I am delighted to announce that the first chapter of my book “Neural Networks and Deep Learning” is now freely available online here.

The chapter explains the basic ideas behind neural networks, including how they learn. I show how powerful these ideas are by writing a short program which uses neural networks to solve a hard problem — recognizing handwritten digits. The chapter also takes a brief look at how deep learning works.

The book’s landing page gives a broader view on the book. And I’ve written a more in-depth discussion of the philosophy behind the book.

Finally, if you’ve read this far I hope you’ll consider supporting my Indiegogo campaign for the book, which will give you access to perks like early drafts of later chapters.