Book excerpt: Getting the most out of neural networks and related data modelling techniques is the purpose of this book. The text, with the accompanying Netlab toolbox, provides all the necessary tools and knowledge. Throughout, the emphasis is on methods that are relevant to the practical application of neural networks to pattern analysis problems. All parts of the toolbox interact in a coherent way, and implementations and descriptions of standard statistical techniques are provided so that they can be used as benchmarks against which more sophisticated algorithms can be evaluated. Plenty of examples and demonstration programs illustrate the theory and help the reader understand the algorithms and how to apply them.