12.7.2 Using Statistics to Control Process Execution

Often, one wants to stop training a network once it has reached some criterion of performance. This can be done by setting the criterion values associated with a statistic value. All statistic values are represented by a StatVal object, which has fields for representing the stopping criterion. The criterion is represented with a relational operator (less than, equal to, etc.) and a comparison value. The fields are as follows:

float value
This holds the current computed or aggregated value of the statistic.
bool flag
This flag indicates if a stopping criterion is active for this statistic. If it is not checked, the remaining fields are ignored.
Relation rel
This is the relational operator to compare value and val.
float val
This is the comparison value to compare value with.
int cnt
This indicates how many times the relation must be met in order to pass criterion. This can be useful to make sure a network has reliable performance under criterion by requiring it to pass muster 2 or 3 times in a row, for example.