[polynomial]

For this particular implementation, what are the advantages of using it for supervised or unsupervised learning? (in general?)

And if it's just being used for the MNIST dataset, is there a particular reason for using it in one or the other fashion?

[locuscoeruleus]

From what I can gather the supervised approach allows you to only learn the representation for style rather than which digit it is. The only reason to use one over the other is to demonstrate that it works, I guess?