data.py

# -- assignment 1 --
import numpy as np
from urllib import request
import gzip
import pickle
import os

def load_synth(num_train=60_000, num_val=10_000, seed=0):
    """
    Load some very basic synthetic data that should be easy to classify. Two features, so that we can plot the
    decision boundary (which is an ellipse in the feature space).

    :param num_train: Number of training instances
    :param num_val: Number of test/validation instances
    :param num_features: Number of features per instance

    :return: Two tuples and an integer: (xtrain, ytrain), (xval, yval), num_cls. The first contains a matrix of training
     data with 2 features as a numpy floating point array, and the corresponding classification labels as a numpy
     integer array. The second contains the test/validation data in the same format. The last integer contains the
     number of classes (this is always 2 for this function).
    """
    np.random.seed(seed)

    THRESHOLD = 0.6
    quad = np.asarray([[1, -0.05], [1, .4]])

    ntotal = num_train + num_val

    x = np.random.randn(ntotal, 2)

    # compute the quadratic form
    q = np.einsum('bf, fk, bk -> b', x, quad, x)
    y = (q > THRESHOLD).astype(int)

    return (x[:num_train, :], y[:num_train]), (x[num_train:, :], y[num_train:]), 2

def load_mnist(final=False, flatten=True):
    """
    Load the MNIST data.

    :param final: If true, return the canonical test/train split. If false, split some validation data from the training
       data and keep the test data hidden.
    :param flatten: If true, each instance is flattened into a vector, so that the data is returns as a matrix with 768
        columns. If false, the data is returned as a 3-tensor preserving each image as a matrix.

    :return: Two tuples and an integer: (xtrain, ytrain), (xval, yval), num_cls. The first contains a matrix of training
     data and the corresponding classification labels as a numpy integer array. The second contains the test/validation
     data in the same format. The last integer contains the number of classes (this is always 2 for this function).

     """

    if not os.path.isfile('mnist.pkl'):
        init()

    xtrain, ytrain, xtest, ytest = load()
    xtl, xsl = xtrain.shape[0], xtest.shape[0]

    if flatten:
        xtrain = xtrain.reshape(xtl, -1)
        xtest  = xtest.reshape(xsl, -1)

    if not final: # return the flattened images
        return (xtrain[:-5000], ytrain[:-5000]), (xtrain[-5000:], ytrain[-5000:]), 10

    return (xtrain, ytrain), (xtest, ytest), 10

# Numpy-only MNIST loader. Courtesy of Hyeonseok Jung
# https://github.com/hsjeong5/MNIST-for-Numpy

filename = [
["training_images","train-images-idx3-ubyte.gz"],
["test_images","t10k-images-idx3-ubyte.gz"],
["training_labels","train-labels-idx1-ubyte.gz"],
["test_labels","t10k-labels-idx1-ubyte.gz"]
]

def download_mnist():
    base_url = "https://peterbloem.nl/files/mnist/" # "http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/mnist/"
    for name in filename:
        print("Downloading "+name[1]+"...")
        request.urlretrieve(base_url+name[1], name[1])
    print("Download complete.")

def save_mnist():
    mnist = {}
    for name in filename[:2]:
        with gzip.open(name[1], 'rb') as f:
            mnist[name[0]] = np.frombuffer(f.read(), np.uint8, offset=16).reshape(-1,28*28)
    for name in filename[-2:]:
        with gzip.open(name[1], 'rb') as f:
            mnist[name[0]] = np.frombuffer(f.read(), np.uint8, offset=8)
    with open("mnist.pkl", 'wb') as f:
        pickle.dump(mnist,f)
    print("Save complete.")

def init():
    download_mnist()
    save_mnist()

def load():
    with open("mnist.pkl",'rb') as f:
        mnist = pickle.load(f)
    return mnist["training_images"], mnist["training_labels"], mnist["test_images"], mnist["test_labels"]

My bad. Thanks for the pointer.