The idea for this book dates back to the NIPS'96 workshop "Tips of the Trade" where, for the first time, a systematic attempt was made to make an assessment and evaluation of tricks for efficiently exploiting neural network techniques. Stimulated by the success of this meeting, the volume editors have prepared the present comprehensive documentation. Besides including chapters developed from the workshop contributions, they have commissioned further chapters to round out the presentation and complete the coverage of relevant subareas. This handy reference book is organized in five parts, each consisting of several coherent chapters using consistent terminology. The work starts with a general introduction and each part opens with an introduction by the volume editors. A comprehensive subject index allows easy access to individual topics. The book is a gold mine not only for professionals and researchers in the area of neural information processing, but also for newcomers to the field.