Understanding neural networks and machine learning concepts you might want to see them in action. An interactive browser based simulator from google Tensor Flow Playground.

This helps to  know what exactly is a neural network.

You can find it here  http://playground.tensorflow.org

Written in Typescript d3.js  it contains  a neural network library that meets the demands of this educational visualization.

A very unique way to learn about neural network.   Instead of setting up so much infrastructure which is time consuming you can try this browser based application which has  the model is prebuilt and can be configured and trained to see the training curve.

This is like running your own machine learning instance for understanding the various aspects of parameters which affects performance.

One can change the parameters. The time taken for training the model is the crux of the application.

To see it in action one can add layers and neurons, change the data set , ratio and other parameters to see the effect of the parameters on the training of the model.