Perceptron learning algorithm not converging to 0

In your current code, the perceptron successfully learns the direction of the decision boundary BUT is unable to translate it.

    y                              y
    ^                              ^
    |  - + \\  +                   |  - \\ +   +
    | -    +\\ +   +               | -   \\  + +   +
    | - -    \\ +                  | - -  \\    +
    | -  -  + \\  +                | -  -  \\ +   +
    ---------------------> x       --------------------> x
        stuck like this            need to get like this

^{(as someone pointed out, here is a more accurate version)}

The problem lies in the fact that your perceptron has no bias term, i.e. a third weight component connected to an input of value 1.

       w0   -----
    x ---->|     |
           |  f  |----> output (+1/-1)
    y ---->|     |
       w1   -----
               ^ w2
    1(bias) ---|

The following is how I corrected the problem:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <time.h>

#define LEARNING_RATE    0.1
#define MAX_ITERATION    100

float randomFloat()
{
    return (float)rand() / (float)RAND_MAX;
}

int calculateOutput(float weights[], float x, float y)
{
    float sum = x * weights[0] + y * weights[1] + weights[2];
    return (sum >= 0) ? 1 : -1;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    srand(time(NULL));

    float x[208], y[208], weights[3], localError, globalError;
    int outputs[208], patternCount, i, p, iteration, output;

    FILE *fp;
    if ((fp = fopen("test1.txt", "r")) == NULL) {
        printf("Cannot open file.\n");
        exit(1);
    }

    i = 0;
    while (fscanf(fp, "%f %f %d", &x[i], &y[i], &outputs[i]) != EOF) {
        if (outputs[i] == 0) {
            outputs[i] = -1;
        }
        i++;
    }
    patternCount = i;

    weights[0] = randomFloat();
    weights[1] = randomFloat();
    weights[2] = randomFloat();

    iteration = 0;
    do {
        iteration++;
        globalError = 0;
        for (p = 0; p < patternCount; p++) {
            output = calculateOutput(weights, x[p], y[p]);

            localError = outputs[p] - output;
            weights[0] += LEARNING_RATE * localError * x[p];
            weights[1] += LEARNING_RATE * localError * y[p];
            weights[2] += LEARNING_RATE * localError;

            globalError += (localError*localError);
        }

        /* Root Mean Squared Error */
        printf("Iteration %d : RMSE = %.4f\n",
            iteration, sqrt(globalError/patternCount));
    } while (globalError > 0 && iteration <= MAX_ITERATION);

    printf("\nDecision boundary (line) equation: %.2f*x + %.2f*y + %.2f = 0\n",
        weights[0], weights[1], weights[2]);

    return 0;
}

… with the following output:

Iteration 1 : RMSE = 0.7206
Iteration 2 : RMSE = 0.5189
Iteration 3 : RMSE = 0.4804
Iteration 4 : RMSE = 0.4804
Iteration 5 : RMSE = 0.3101
Iteration 6 : RMSE = 0.4160
Iteration 7 : RMSE = 0.4599
Iteration 8 : RMSE = 0.3922
Iteration 9 : RMSE = 0.0000

Decision boundary (line) equation: -2.37*x + -2.51*y + -7.55 = 0

And here’s a short animation of the code above using MATLAB, showing the decision boundary at each iteration: