I wanted a local dataset to begin messing around with deep learning (and whatever the next hot technology will be in 6 months lol). Since most of my time is spent on electronic medical record (EMR) data, I decided to set out on finding a free dataset that I could leverage for my experimentations. Since I had to bounce around the net combining pieces of information to make this thing operational, I decided to write this post for myself and perhaps the passerby.

I’ve recently grown more interested in understanding deep learning (DL) and so I purchased Deep Learning in R from Manning Books along with its digital course taught by @Rick_Scavetta. It’s been very interesting and so naturally I was excited to try my hand at the “Hello, World!” of DL and play with the infamous MNIST dataset.