Section III (pages 64-90) Summary

Section three opens with Richard continuing the story of his first encounters with C. The fall semester closes and he says his goodbyes to C. He teaches in the spring and prepares for his comprehensive exams. Although he passes and gains admission to the PhD program, he decides to not go through with it and leave U. forever. He asks C. to join him but she is involved with someone.

Richard then switches back to the present and eats lunch with Lentz and the others. Plover baits Richard with his knowledge of literature and stumps him with a quote. Richard is given the chance to redeem himself by explaining back propagation. The concept is that input is given to a neural net. It passes through variously weighted paths in the net and then arrives at a final...