Neural Network Rule Extraction and the LED Display Recognition Problem

This paper presents the results from a neural network rule extraction algorithm applied to the LED display recognition problem. We show that pruned neural networks with small number of hidden nodes and connections are able to recognize all the 10 digits from 0 to 9. Earlier work by other researchers demonstrated how symbolic fuzzy rules can be extracted from trained neural networks to solve this problem. Our rules in contrast are crisp rules, and they are obtained from smaller networks. As a result, simpler and easier to understand rules are obtained. These rules give us an insight of how neural networks differentiate one digit from the rest in LED display recognition problem.