Machine Learning for Recognizing Handwritten Digits

Machine learning is a field of artificial intelligence in which a system is designed to learn automatically given a set of input data. After the system has learnt (we say that the system has been trained), we can use it to make predictions for new data, unseen before. This approach makes it possible to solve complex problems which are difficult or impossible to solve with traditional sequential programming. Recognizing handwritten text is a problem that traces back to the first automatic machines that needed to recognize individual characters in handwritten documents. Think about, for example, the ZIP codes on letters at the post office and the automation needed to recognize these five digits.