Cannot get MNIST database through Anaconda/jupyter

Question

Hu guys,

I\'m new to python/anaconda/jupyter/numPy, panda, etc.... so please excuse me if it\'s a really stupid question. I\'m trying to obtain MNIST database by using a

Answer 1

Here is an alternative location to download the MNIST dataset (referenced from https://github.com/ageron/handson-ml/blob/master/03_classification.ipynb)

from six.moves import urllib
from sklearn.datasets import fetch_mldata
try:
    mnist = fetch_mldata('MNIST original')
except urllib.error.HTTPError as ex:
    print("Could not download MNIST data from mldata.org, trying alternative...")

    # Alternative method to load MNIST, if mldata.org is down
    from scipy.io import loadmat
    mnist_alternative_url = "https://github.com/amplab/datascience-sp14/raw/master/lab7/mldata/mnist-original.mat"
    mnist_path = "./mnist-original.mat"
    response = urllib.request.urlopen(mnist_alternative_url)
    with open(mnist_path, "wb") as f:
        content = response.read()
        f.write(content)
    mnist_raw = loadmat(mnist_path)
    mnist = {
        "data": mnist_raw["data"].T,
        "target": mnist_raw["label"][0],
        "COL_NAMES": ["label", "data"],
        "DESCR": "mldata.org dataset: mnist-original",
    }
    print("Success!")