title: Having problems in loading MNIST database
body: <p>So i am simply trying to load the MNIST database (which i downloaded) and train
  a classifier and then save the training session to a file for future use. I have tried downloading it directly (through fetch_mldata) but my internet seems to be too slow to go that way,so i am trying to read the database by downloading it exteranlly but am getting an error as given below the code. Any help would be much appreciated!</p>
  
  <pre><code>from sklearn.externals import joblib
  from sklearn import datasets
  from skimage.feature import hog
  from sklearn.datasets import fetch_mldata
  from sklearn.svm import LinearSVC
  import numpy as np
  import mlab
  import scipy.io
  
  print 'fetching'
  dataset = scipy.io.loadmat('mnist-original.mat')
  
  print 'fetched'
  features = np.array(dataset.data, 'int16')
  labels = np.array(dataset.target, 'int')
  ist_hog_fd = []
  for feature in features:
      fd = hog(feature.reshape((28, 28)), orientations=9, pixels_per_cell=(14, 14), cells_per_block=(1, 1), visualise=False)
      list_hog_fd.append(fd)
  hog_features = np.array(list_hog_fd, 'float64')
  clf=LinearSVC()
  clf.fit(hog_features,labels)
  joblib.dump(clf, "digits_cls.pkl", compress=3)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When i run it , i get an error as:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/home/samad/Red_Queen/v2(ud&amp;ay)/scratch2.py", line 14, in &lt;module&gt;
      features = np.array(dataset.data, 'int16')
  AttributeError: 'dict' object has no attribute 'data'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>To be honest i am not very known to numpy arrays as well as handling .mat
  files.</p>