proben1.README file:
 ======================

Proben1 is a collection of benchmark problems for neural network
research, accompanied by a set of rules and conventions for their
application. It consists of 
  - a set of data files in a very simple common format,
  - the set of original data files these files were created from,
  - documentation for each of these files, and
  - a technical report describing the set of problems and the rules


The complete collection comes as a single GNU zip'ped Unix tar file:

  proben1.tar.gz

The technical report is called

   Proben1 --- A Set of Neural Network Benchmark Problems
   and Benchmarking Rules

and has the following abstract:

Proben1 is a collection of problems for neural network learning in the
realm of pattern classification and function approximation plus a set
of rules and conventions for carrying out benchmark tests with these
or similar problems. Proben1 contains 15 data sets from 12 different
domains. All datasets represent realistic problems which could be
called diagnosis tasks and all but one consist of real world data. The
datasets are all presented in the same simple format, using an
attribute representation that can directly be used for neural network
training.  Along with the datasets, Proben1 defines a set of rules for
how to conduct and how to document neural network benchmarking.
The purpose of the problem and rule collection is to give researchers
easy access to data for the evaluation of their algorithms and
networks and to make direct comparison of the published results feasible.
This report describes the datasets and the benchmarking rules. It
also gives some basic performance measures indicating the difficulty
of the various problems. These measures can be used as baselines for
comparison.
--

Here is a bibtex entry of the report:

@techreport{Prechelt94c,
   author    = {Lutz Prechelt},
   title     = {{PROBEN1} --- {A} Set of Benchmarks and Benchmarking
                Rules for Neural Network Training Algorithms},
   institution = {Fakult\"at f\"ur Informatik, Universit\"at Karlsruhe},
   year      = {1994},
   number    = {21/94},
   address   = {D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany},
   month     = sep,
   note      = {Anonymous FTP: /pub/pa\-pers/tech\-reports/1994/1994-21.ps.Z
                on ftp.ira.uka.de},
}

  Lutz
  

Lutz Prechelt   (email: prechelt@ira.uka.de)            | Whenever you 
Institut fuer Programmstrukturen und Datenorganisation  | complicate things,
Universitaet Karlsruhe;  76128 Karlsruhe;  Germany      | they get
(Voice: ++49/721/608-4068, FAX: ++49/721/694092)        | less simple.