Activation Functions: The 'Secret Sauce' of Deep Learning
Have you ever wondered how a neural network learns to understand complex things like language or images? A big part of the answer lies in a component that acts like a tiny decision-maker inside the network. This component is the activation function, and it is a critical element that significantly impacts the performance of deep neural networks. Understanding these functions is key to grasping how a network goes from seeing random data to recognizing sophisticated patterns. So, let’s explore what they are, why they are so essential, and how they have evolved. ...