MNIST is a database of handwritten digits collected by Yann Lecun and widely used in machine learning research.

MNIST is a database of handwritten digits collected by Yann Lecun, a famous computer scientist, when he was working at AT&T-Bell Labs on the problem of automation of check readings for banks. The data set is a benchmark widely used in machine learning research. Due to its small size it is also widely used for educational purposes.

Here is the full documentation for MNIST database of handwritten digits:

It is a good database for people who want to try learning techniques and pattern recognition methods on real-world data while spending minimal efforts on preprocessing and formatting.