MNIST Digit Classifier
Neural network built from scratch achieving 98.32% accuracy on MNIST.
Overview
This project implements a neural network from scratch using only NumPy and PyTorch (for matrix operations), achieving 98.32% accuracy on the MNIST handwritten digit classification task. I built the entire network architecture including forward propagation, backpropagation, and various optimization algorithms to understand the fundamental concepts behind neural networks before using higher-level frameworks.
Key Features
- Custom implementation of backpropagation algorithm
- Multiple activation functions (ReLU, Softmax)
- Mini-batch gradient descent with momentum
- Learning rate scheduling
- Regularization techniques (ex. dropout)
Challenges & Solutions
Implementing backpropagation from scratch was challenging, especially since there's so much going on (weight initializations, dropout rates, etc.), and ensuring correct gradient computation (that was done by hand, ouch). I verified my implementation by comparing results with PyTorch's autograd on simple cases.
Status
CompletedTech Stack
Year
2024
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