On the Accuracy of Interpolation Based on Single-Layer Artificial Neural Networks with a Focus on Defeating the Runge Phenomenon

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are a tool in approximation theory widely used to solve interpolation problems. In fact, ANNs can be assimilated to functions since they take an input and return an output. The structure of the specifically adopted network determines the underlying approximation space, while the form of the function is selected by fixing the parameters of the network. In the present paper, we consider one-hidden layer ANNs with a feedforward architecture, also referred to as shallow or two-layer networks, so that the structure is determined by the number and types of neurons. The determination of the parameters that define the function, called training, is done via the resolution of the approximation problem, so by imposing the interpolation through a set of specific nodes. We present the case where the parameters are trained using a procedure that is referred to as Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) that leads to a linear interpolation problem. In such hypotheses, the existence of an ANN interpolating function is guaranteed. Given that the ANN is interpolating, the error incurred occurs outside the sampling interpolation nodes provided by the user. In this study, various choices of nodes are analyzed: equispaced, Chebychev, and randomly selected ones. Then, the focus is on regular target functions, for which it is known that interpolation can lead to spurious oscillations, a phenomenon that in the ANN literature is referred to as overfitting. We obtain good accuracy of the ANN interpolating function in all tested cases using these different types of interpolating nodes and different types of neurons. The following study is conducted starting from the well-known bell-shaped Runge example, which makes it clear that the construction of a global interpolating polynomial is accurate only if trained on suitably chosen nodes, ad example the Chebychev ones. In order to evaluate the behavior when the number of interpolation nodes increases, we increase the number of neurons in our network and compare it with the interpolating polynomial. We test using Runge’s function and other well-known examples with different regularities. As expected, the accuracy of the approximation with a global polynomial increases only if the Chebychev nodes are considered. Instead, the error for the ANN interpolating function always decays, and in most cases we observe that the convergence follows what is observed in the polynomial case on Chebychev nodes, despite the set of nodes used for training. Then we can conclude that the use of such an ANN defeats the Runge phenomenon. Our results show the power of ANNs to achieve excellent approximations when interpolating regular functions also starting from uniform and random nodes, particularly for Runge’s function.