Introduction to Artificial Neural Network (ANN) Methods: What They Are and How to Use Them*.

Basic concepts of ANNs together with three most widely used ANN learning strategies (error back-propagation, Kohonen, and counterpropagation) are explained and discussed. In order to show how the explained methods can be applied to chemical problems, one simple example, the classification and the prediction of the origin of different olive oil samples, each represented by eigtht fatty acid concentrations, is worked out in detail.