Any suggestions on where to begin learning neural networks for beginners? Some advice on useful resources , books, papers, etc will be appreciated. Thanks
I think that will depend on you. Do you have prior coding skills in python or similar languages? If yes, then you can just follow the example on any of these links:
You can try by taking https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning/home/welcome course. It gives need to know information about neural network and additionally you can experiment it with provided exercises.
You will use "Function Approximation and Nonlinear Regression" section, there is a part called "Exemples and How To", you can implement these exemples to understand how it works. Below the link :
I would suggest you to start on with Machine Learning. You can complete courses on linear regression, logistics regression, reinforcement learning and others which are available in coursera website. You can go also for Prof. Andrew Ng's course on ML. You can focus on understanding the fundamentals of it before going on Neural Networks and Deep Learning-these courses are available too!!! There are courses such as Improving Deep Neural Networks which you can learn from his course. As long as you're familiar with general math and using tools such as GNU Octave or Python, you will be able to complete all these courses with a reasonable understanding of basics. You can also watch other YouTube videos on this.
I would suggest you to start with the classics if you want to know the foundational base of neural networks: Kohonen maps (basic read here: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/artificial_neural_network/artificial_neural_network_kohonen_selforganizing_feature_maps.htm ); then pure ARTs memories, and then you'll hate the topic or just want go deeper.
If you r looking for code based implementation u can follow udemy course. To know the background in depth you can follow lectures by Andrew Ng. I would like to suggest you to learn by doing projects as they help to explore more. You can also follow machinelearningmastery for clarification of doubts and basic well explained code snippets .