Basins of Attraction to Multiple Fixed Points in Discrete-time Hysteresis Neural Networks

Abstract

This paper studies multiple fixed points in a discrete-time hysteresis neural network. The network consists of binary hysteresis neurons characterized by the threshold parameter. Depending on the parameter, the network can have a variety of multiple binary fixed points. Stability of each fixed point is characterized by basin of attraction (BOA): the set of initial points falling into the fixed point. In order to evaluate the distribution of BOA sizes, we present entropy. In order to escape from the curse of dimensionality, we introduce a simple problem: classification of binary data set. In the classification, BOAs correspond to classes. In the problem, we clarify that the threshold parameter can control the entropy, especially, can maximize the entropy: the distribution approaches to uniform. As a concrete example, we consider an item response data set in education. Using two fundamental metrics in the item response theory, the classification results are evaluated.