Data comes from an original (non-machine-learning) study:
Warwick J Nash, Tracy L Sellers, Simon R Talbot, Andrew J Cawthorn and Wes B Ford (1994)
"The Population Biology of Abalone (_Haliotis_ species) in Tasmania. I. Blacklip Abalone (_H. rubra_) from the North Coast and Islands of Bass Strait",
Sea Fisheries Division, Technical Report No. 48 (ISSN 1034-3288)

Original Owners of Database:

Marine Resources Division
Marine Research Laboratories - Taroona
Department of Primary Industry and Fisheries, Tasmania
GPO Box 619F, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia
(contact: Warwick Nash +61 02 277277, wnash '@' dpi.tas.gov.au)

Donor of Database:

Sam Waugh (Sam.Waugh '@' cs.utas.edu.au)
Department of Computer Science, University of Tasmania
GPO Box 252C, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia

Data Set Information:

Predicting the age of abalone from physical measurements. The age of abalone is determined by cutting the shell through the cone, staining it, and counting the number of rings through a microscope -- a boring and time-consuming task. Other measurements, which are easier to obtain, are used to predict the age. Further information, such as weather patterns and location (hence food availability) may be required to solve the problem.

From the original data examples with missing values were removed (the majority having the predicted value missing), and the ranges of the continuous values have been scaled for use with an ANN (by dividing by 200).

Attribute Information:

Given is the attribute name, attribute type, the measurement unit and a brief description. The number of rings is the value to predict: either as a continuous value or as a classification problem.

Name / Data Type / Measurement Unit / Description
-----------------------------
Sex / nominal / -- / M, F, and I (infant)
Length / continuous / mm / Longest shell measurement
Diameter / continuous / mm / perpendicular to length
Height / continuous / mm / with meat in shell
Whole weight / continuous / grams / whole abalone
Shucked weight / continuous / grams / weight of meat
Viscera weight / continuous / grams / gut weight (after bleeding)
Shell weight / continuous / grams / after being dried
Rings / integer / -- / +1.5 gives the age in years

The readme file contains attribute statistics.

Relevant Papers:

Sam Waugh (1995) "Extending and benchmarking Cascade-Correlation", PhD thesis, Computer Science Department, University of Tasmania.
[Web Link]

David Clark, Zoltan Schreter, Anthony Adams "A Quantitative Comparison of Dystal and Backpropagation", submitted to the Australian Conference on Neural Networks (ACNN'96).