1. A computer implemented method of classifying handwritten words associated with an answer to a question using a distance based binary classifier, the method comprising: importing a known answer to a question; importing an image of a handwritten response to the question, the handwritten response to be classified as either a correct answer to the question or an incorrect answer to the question; constructing a reference dictionary set of words that is a function of the known answer, the referred dictionary set of words including handwritten characters associated with a source of the handwritten response to the question; comparing each word of the reference dictionary to the imported image of the handwritten response to be classified using a modified tangent distance (TD) process, wherein the modified TD process includes altering each individual character of a word that is a member of the reference dictionary independently, the alterations minimizing a distance between each word in the reference dictionary and the handwritten response, and the minimal distance being recorded for each word in the reference dictionary; and classifying the image of handwritten response as correct or incorrect based on the minimal distances recorded for each word in the dictionary.
1. A computer implemented method of classifying handwritten words associated with an answer to a question using a distance based binary classifier, the method comprising: importing a known answer to a question; importing an image of a handwritten response to the question, the handwritten response to be classified as either a correct answer to the question or an incorrect answer to the question; constructing a reference dictionary set of words that is a function of the known answer, the referred dictionary set of words including handwritten characters associated with a source of the handwritten response to the question; comparing each word of the reference dictionary to the imported image of the handwritten response to be classified using a modified tangent distance (TD) process, wherein the modified TD process includes altering each individual character of a word that is a member of the reference dictionary independently, the alterations minimizing a distance between each word in the reference dictionary and the handwritten response, and the minimal distance being recorded for each word in the reference dictionary; and classifying the image of handwritten response as correct or incorrect based on the minimal distances recorded for each word in the dictionary. 7. The computer implemented method of classifying handwritten words according to claim 1 , wherein a Tangent Vector is computed for each individual character of a reference word, where 
 Tangent_Vector i =Transformation i (Image_ ref,α i )−Image_ ref, where i signifies that a computation or variable is specific to an individual character of the reference word, Image_ref is a reference image, and the function Transformation i ( ) is any transformation of the Image_ref by a parameter α i .