> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://machine-learning.paperspace.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://machine-learning.paperspace.com/wiki/mnist.md).

# MNIST

![](/files/-Lvg7Fj0FIdVfziJHILk)

Short for “Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology," MNIST is the canonical database of labeled images of handwritten digits from 0 through 9.  MNIST is often used in sample projects as a sort of "hello world" for machine learning.  It is also used frequently as a performance benchmark.  

The dataset has a training set of 60,000 examples, and a test set of 10,000 examples which are available from this [page](http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/mnist/).

## MNIST + Gradient

MNIST is available in the [Public Datasets Repository](https://docs.paperspace.com/gradient/data/public-datasets-repository) which is provided for free in Gradient.  These datasets are automatically mounted to every Notebook and Experiment.