Four wires make one number

Remember what appeared on the last slide: four weighted wires enter every hidden unit.

Follow only hidden 1. The bottle still sends the same four taste inputs:

cabernet 1, viognier 0, plummy 1, apricotty 0

The inputs are still 1 or 0. The new decimals are the weights on the wires.

We chose these example starting weights only to make the calculation easy to follow.

Each wire makes one contribution:

1 x .20 = .20

0 x .10 = 0

1 x .30 = .30

0 x .20 = 0

Press multiply, then add them. The four contributions make a weighted total of .50.

This is the number hidden 1 has built from the four tastes. The inputs were still 1 or 0. The decimal appeared because the weights changed how much each input counted.

But the unit has not sent anything onward yet. First, we need to decide what it should do with this total.