title: SVM Kernel for MNIST
body: <p>Facts:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><p>Support Vector Machines is a well known Machine Learning algorithm.</p></li>
  <li><p>MNIST is a popular hand written digit recognition contest.</p></li>
  <li><p>SVMs are almost as good as <em>hand tuned</em> neural networks.</p></li>
  <li><p>In using SVMS, the choice of Kernel function is crucial.</p></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Question:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><p>In State of the art results on MNIST using SVMs, what kernels do people use?</p></li>
  <li><p>Assume that the inputs are 16x16 gray-scale images.</p></li>
  <li><p>I want to know what kernel to apply $K(x,z)$, where x/z are 16x16 images and $K$ is the kernel function.</p></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>