First story about feature selection
Once upon a time there were two farmers who lived next to each other.
One day, they went to the market together and each bought a horse. As the
horses ran across the fence between the two farms all the time, the farmers
felt they needed to think of some way to tell the horses apart. First they
thought about coloring the ears of the two horses differently. But only a few
days after they did so, the color wore off. Then they thought about tying a
rope of different color around the neck of each horse. However, a few days
later, the ropes were lost. Finally, one farmer thought of a good idea and
said to the other, "let's measure them. I just noticed that my red
horse is quite a few inches taller than your white one!"
Second story about feature selection
The wife of a general gave birth to his son. The general sent a soldier to find
out whether his son looked like him. When the soldier came back he said: Your
son looks exactly like you! He is bold headed and toothless.
He understands nothing , and he screams all the time.
A story related (maybe) to neural network
An elementary school teacher asked her class to give examples of the great
technological inventions in the 20th century. One student said it was the
telephone, as it lets you talk to anyone in the world. And another student
said it was the airplane, because an airplane can take you to anywhere in the
world. Then the teacher saw little Johnny eagerly waving his hand in the back
of the classroom. "What do you think is the greatest invention, Johnny?" "The
thermos!" The teacher was very puzzled and asked "Why do you think the thermos?
All it can do is to keep warm things warm and cold things cold." "But how
does it know when to keep things warm and when to keep them cold?"
Don't you sometimes want to ask the question "How does a neural network
know ...?"