> I should add, unless it isn't clear, that we really should retire the dataset. From a research perspective, MNIST is basically solved. I think current perfor

> I should add, unless it isn't clear, that we really should retire the dataset. From a research perspective, MNIST is basically solved. I think current performance on MNIST is better than humans, correct? But it's still valuable as a teaching tool or a "Hello world" data set, because it's so simple and because most reasonable algorithms will reach 97% accuracy. Even if you build your tools from scratch, it makes a nice homework-sized problem. And it's an obviously useful task that anyone can understand. "Oh, digit recognition for mail!"