Neural networks have recently received a great deal of at tention in many fields of study. The excitement stems from the fact that these networks are attempts to model the capa bilities of the human brain. People are naturally attracted by attempts to create human-like machines, a Frankenstein ob session, if you will. On a practical level the human brain has many features that are desirable in an electronic computer. The human brain has the ability to generalize from abstract ideas, recognize patterns in the presence of noise, quickly recall memories, and withstand localized damage. From a statistical perspective neural networks are interesting be cause of their potential use in prediction and classification problems.