The decade prior to publication has seen an explosive growth in com- tational speed and memory and a rapid enrichment in our understa- ing of arti?cial neural networks. These two factors have cooperated to at last provide systems engineers and statisticians with a working, prac- cal, and successful ability to routinely make accurate complex, nonlinear models of such ill-understood phenomena as physical, economic, social, and information-based time series and signals and of the patterns h- den i ...