Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim

castel.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 223 posts

Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim

#191

Post by function_seven »

4thaccount wrote: post #78
function_seven wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that it detracts from your point, but I definitely benefited from notetaking on my computer in school. For an AP History class, I typed up—in outline style (I, II; A, B; 1, 2; a, b; etc)—all my notes on the required reading. At the end of the course, I had a few hundred pages of these notes all printed up. I never had to go back and read any of them. Just the process of typing them up in the first place firmly fi…

History Math at all. I'm an electrical engineer (pretty good at math as that's all you do for 4 years in college), but can process a history lecture much much faster and easier. Outlines are great for History (I agree), but this isn't as easy for Math. A single equation can need more explanation than a novel. Note that I'm not at all belittling the study of history...just trying to show the counter to the parent post…

I was relating to the parent comment about writing v. typing, so I kinda lost the original point of the article.

Yeah, Math is a much different subject when it comes to notetaking and processing the information you learn. There are a few equations to memorize, but to really excel at the subject, you need to learn more why's than you do what's

Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim

#192

Post by jki275 »

ivanbakel wrote: post #186
jki275 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever sat in the back row of a lecture hall and watched what the students are doing on their laptops?

What does that have to do with anything?

A lot.

Laptops are generally disruptive to the entire class, and (anecdotally, but I’ve done a lot of higher learning) almost all of their use is not for note taking or anything related to the class.

So why not ban them? Many professors do.

Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim

#193

Post by burtonator »

I have to make a plug for the project I'm working on as it seems like you guys are the target market:

https://getpolarized.io/

Polar allows students and researchers to keep all their research in one place, take notes, highlights, annotations, etc.

You can tag your books and suspend resume reading without losing your place.

It also supports sync with Anki which is rather nice.

The one caveat is that I don't (yet) support math as well as I would like.

Latex is supported by summernote but I haven't enabled the module yet. I usually wait for enough people to complain but math is definitely something I want to support.

Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim

#194

Post by adrianrocamora »

ordu wrote: post #137
setquk wrote: post #65

I don't agree with this. Perhaps it's possible for someone with exceptional LaTeX and vim knowledge, but even after using both for 20 years I wouldn't do this. The point of the lecture is to assimilate structure and basic understanding, not to produce a neat set of notes instantly. To take notes to this detail means you're putting more time into the note taking than the work. Use a pen and paper. Write down structure…

People are different, the processes in their minds goes different ways. People develops different styles of learning and then they adopt to that styles and adopt styles for themselves. So it is pointless to agree or disagree. I personally like this idea of vim+LaTeX. It is close to what I did while studying math, though I write notes down with pen and paper. Mostly I wrote down them once and read them once before exa…

I agree that Greek might not be the best for people with a different linguistic background. By the way, did you mean Galois Theory? If it's OK to ask, what other languages do you speak mainly besides English?

Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim

#195

Post by Perseids »

ordu wrote: post #137
setquk wrote: post #65

I don't agree with this. Perhaps it's possible for someone with exceptional LaTeX and vim knowledge, but even after using both for 20 years I wouldn't do this. The point of the lecture is to assimilate structure and basic understanding, not to produce a neat set of notes instantly. To take notes to this detail means you're putting more time into the note taking than the work. Use a pen and paper. Write down structure…

People are different, the processes in their minds goes different ways. People develops different styles of learning and then they adopt to that styles and adopt styles for themselves. So it is pointless to agree or disagree. I personally like this idea of vim+LaTeX. It is close to what I did while studying math, though I write notes down with pen and paper. Mostly I wrote down them once and read them once before exa…

I wholeheartedly agree on the "People are different" part. I for one am never able to process information and write it down. It's always either thinking about the content or "copying down curvy lines that purposely mean something". The worst lectures for me were when the teacher / professor forced us to copy down the lectures, even though they had perfect lecture preparations they could have just uploaded online. Or teachers that gave us the homework of copying down these pages of vocabularies because "only then you will remember them".

If you remember only one thing about teaching: There are multitudes of learning styles and only a minority of students will have similar ones than you. Probably, the (as I imagine) magical experience of remembering after writing something down is so intense that it is hard to let that feeling go and let others have their different styles.

Edit: Xi was the worst for me, too. I think the standard letter form as portrayed in print does not lend itself to quick handwriting. Also, if I compare how much time is spend in elementary school teaching how to efficiently write the Latin alphabet to how there is no introduction in university regarding the Greek alphabet (except if you are lucky a complete table with their pronunciation), it is almost ludicrous. Yes, we are all adults at that point in time, but for some reason I still didn't get the idea to google for "how to write greek letters efficiently" back then [1][2].

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+write+greek+letters+efficie...

[2] https://www.foundalis.com/lan/hw/grkhandw.htm

Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim

#196

Post by asimilator »

jki275 wrote: post #192
ivanbakel wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that have to do with anything?

A lot. Laptops are generally disruptive to the entire class, and (anecdotally, but I’ve done a lot of higher learning) almost all of their use is not for note taking or anything related to the class. So why not ban them? Many professors do.

So when you get to the real world and everyone in the meeting is on their laptop? ...

Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim

#197

Post by ivanbakel »

jki275 wrote: post #192
ivanbakel wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that have to do with anything?

A lot. Laptops are generally disruptive to the entire class, and (anecdotally, but I’ve done a lot of higher learning) almost all of their use is not for note taking or anything related to the class. So why not ban them? Many professors do.

>So why not ban them?

Because some students are using them to take notes, and banning electronics harms the learning of those students.

Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim

#198

Post by srean »

andrepd wrote: post #150
madengr wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto, EE too. I bought a copy of Abramowitz and Stegun just for the great table of Laplace Transforms. If I were a professor, I’d ban all electronics from the room. All the decent professors handed out copies of the notes anyway, or wrote them in real-time on an overhead projector, for easy copying later.

Ridiculous. You're forcing your own preferences and quirks onto a class-full of students. They are adults, they can make their own decisions and do what suits them best. As we can see from this very article what works for some does not match what works for you.

> They are adults, they can make their own decisions and do what suits them best

They can, but do they ?

Given my experience as a student in the US long time ago, it rarely seemed so. I am all for treating them as adults as long as its not disturbing/distracting others in the class.

Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim

#199

Post by EdwardCoffin »

I got a STEM degree in the early 1990s, and my usual note taking style was in the same vein: I used four colours of pen, a straightedge for lines, and tried to make nicely presentable notes that I would not have to make alterations to after the lecture.

In retrospect I think this was completely insane. I was so preoccupied with the mundane details of layout and presentation that many of the important technical details the professors were talking about went right by me. I'm amazed I managed to get by with this style.

One of the courses I did best in was one for which the blackboard presentation was drawn from the textbook, and in that one I did not bother with the elaborate note taking, just relied on the textbook. For some reason I never made the connection between me doing unusually well in that course and the fact that I wasn't distracted by note taking.

If I were to do it all over again I would make my notes merely capture the information (and if I knew the information was in my text, just capture enough to identify where), and if I really wanted beautifully laid out notes I would rewrite them after class, with the added benefit that the rewriting would be an implicit review.

Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim

#200

Post by anoncake »

jki275 wrote: post #192
ivanbakel wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that have to do with anything?

A lot. Laptops are generally disruptive to the entire class, and (anecdotally, but I’ve done a lot of higher learning) almost all of their use is not for note taking or anything related to the class. So why not ban them? Many professors do.

They are distracting other students using a computer. Why do you want to ban using a computer but keep permitting distracting other students?
Post reply on HN