A New Training Method for Large Self Organizing Maps

Self Organizing Maps (SOMs) are widely used neural networks for classification or visualization of large datasets. Like many neural network simulations, implementations of the SOM algorithm need a scan of all the neural units in order to simulate the work of a parallel machine. This paper reports a new learning algorithm that speeds up the training of a SOM with a little loss of the performance on many quality tests. The very low computation time, means that this algorithm can be used as a fast visualization tool for large multidimensional datasets.