42. The computer-readable medium of claim 41 wherein the characteristics in each set are ordered by the order in which the strokes are handwritten.
43. The computer-readable medium of claim 42 wherein each characteristic has a place within the set and wherein a comparison value is calculated by adding together the squared distance between the starting points and the squared distance between the ending points of two characteristics, the two characteristics being selected from the same place within the sets of characteristics representing the pair of sample patterns.