Optimal Learning and the Class of Unimodal Error Surface Loading Problems

The effectiveness of connectionist models in emulating intelligent behaviour and solving significant practical problems is strictly related to the capability of the learning algorithms to find optimal or near-optimal solutions, and to generalize to new examples. This paper deals with optimal learning and provides a unified viewpoint of most significant results in the field. In particular, we exhibit a computational model such that the solution of all loading problems giving rise to unimodal error functions require the same time, thus suggesting that they belong to the same computational class.