Because it can be difficult even for humans to recognize others' sloppy handwriting, identifying handwritten numbers is a common test for programming intelligence into artificial neural networks.

Scientists have developed an artificial neural network out of DNA that can recognize highly complex and noisy molecular information.

The innovative project involved running a neural network directly on a TI-84 Plus CE to recognize handwritten digits.

The programming is just to get the neuron algorithm. The actual character recognition is handled by training the net using example input data — writing numbers over and over again on the chalkboard.