title: character recognition in Java
body: <p>I have a new project that invloves on-line character recognition (recognizing characters as they are written). My idea is that each character is defined by a number of strokes that fit a mathmatical model. For instance, 'A' could be defined by three linear strokes; 'O' could be defined as a single circular stroke.
  The reason for using linear regression would be because not every stroke would be a perfect line or curve every time.Linear regression could be used to form an 'acceptable range' for the strokes.</p>
  
  <p>My questions are:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>Are there better/easier ways to do this?</p></li>
  <li><p>Does Java have some built in functions or modules that perform linear regression?</p></li>
  <li><p>Are there any languages that could do this easier than Java?</p></li>
  </ol>