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Mathematics all-in-one cheat-sheet (2013) [pdf]

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Re: Mathematics all-in-one cheat-sheet (2013) [pdf]

#71
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually can't tell if that was an intentional "margin" joke, or if the author is just bluntly stating a fact about Wiles' proof... EDIT: Nope, probably intentional. The author doesn't say something similar for any other proof based on a quick CTRL+F :)

Fermat wrote that in the margin of his book Arithmetica that a proof existed, but there wasn’t space in the margin to write it. It took Wiles 385 years to find a proof, and it won’t fit in a margin. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem That’s the allure of the theorem; that a simple unknown proof may exist.

> That’s the allure of the theorem; that a simple unknown proof may exist.

Well, Fermat made lots of similar claims wrt. other propositions, and for most of them the proof was found easily, or perhaps they were refuted altogether and shown to be wrong. FLT gets its name because it was a very rare case of a claim that just couldn't be solved, one way or the other. In fact, it seems that Fermat himself may have realized at some point that what he thought of as a proof he had, was in fact wrong - and dropped his claim altogether as a consequence. Which would then explain why it was only found as a margin note in a textbook. It's fascinating because it's such a simple claim to state, and yet the proof is incredibly complex. To be sure, logicians can predict that such cases will occur, in the abstract; it's a bit like having hard-to-solve instances of the SAT. But it's still nice to have such a natural example!

Re: Mathematics all-in-one cheat-sheet (2013) [pdf]

#72
I really didn't want to be that guy, and props for the author for such comprehensive reference work, but god, what an appalling typography. Bad tables with too many lines bitmap formulas with misadjusted size, poor spacing, ugly font... Almost everything that could be wrong is wrong.

Re: Mathematics all-in-one cheat-sheet (2013) [pdf]

#73
post #50
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fermat wrote that in the margin of his book Arithmetica that a proof existed, but there wasn’t space in the margin to write it. It took Wiles 385 years to find a proof, and it won’t fit in a margin. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem That’s the allure of the theorem; that a simple unknown proof may exist.

Yes, I remember when news of his proof broke, being disappointed at how voluminous and obscure (to someone like me) it was. I'd been hoping for something I might be able to get my head around. (Hard as it was, I don't think Wiles spent 385 years coming up with it btw!)

Phrased in a way that doesn't imply Wiles's extreme longevity: it took 385 years of advances in mathematics to invent the tools and frameworks that allowed Wiles to come up with the proof.

Re: Mathematics all-in-one cheat-sheet (2013) [pdf]

#74

I like the idea of this, but I'm not sure that "cheat sheet" is the best term for it, given that it weighs in at quite a few pages (191 physical).

The sort of ~100 page softcover reference book that we were permitted to use in highschool math, physics, and chemistry exams is called around here, literally translated, a book of tables. The term is probably a remnant from a time before pocket calculators when it contained actual trig and log tables. "Book of formulas" would probably be a more apt name nowadays. Not sure if there's a common word for such a thing in English.

Re: Mathematics all-in-one cheat-sheet (2013) [pdf]

#75
Wow, I have to say I feel somewhat bad for the author who spent so much time (months?) compiling this semi-comprehensive reference work. There's so much information, but at the same time, so little useful information to any particular reader. It's so broad as to be a hindrance to using it in any sort of daily reference.

Who would use this? Wouldn't you probably resort to a reference more specific to your field?

Is this the product of someone's superficial fascination with mathematical equations combined with OCD to copy down everything ever read, gone awry? Or is this like a strange version of a Noah Webster?

Re: Mathematics all-in-one cheat-sheet (2013) [pdf]

#76
post #74

I like the idea of this, but I'm not sure that "cheat sheet" is the best term for it, given that it weighs in at quite a few pages (191 physical).

The sort of ~100 page softcover reference book that we were permitted to use in highschool math, physics, and chemistry exams is called around here, literally translated, a book of tables. The term is probably a remnant from a time before pocket calculators when it contained actual trig and log tables. "Book of formulas" would probably be a more apt name nowadays. Not sure if there's a common word for such a thing in…

This kind of thing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abramowitz_and_Stegun

I'm not sure there's really an English word for it. That's strange.

Re: Mathematics all-in-one cheat-sheet (2013) [pdf]

#77
post #74

I like the idea of this, but I'm not sure that "cheat sheet" is the best term for it, given that it weighs in at quite a few pages (191 physical).

The sort of ~100 page softcover reference book that we were permitted to use in highschool math, physics, and chemistry exams is called around here, literally translated, a book of tables. The term is probably a remnant from a time before pocket calculators when it contained actual trig and log tables. "Book of formulas" would probably be a more apt name nowadays. Not sure if there's a common word for such a thing in…

In Ireland, we literally called our reference book for exams "the log tables", despite there not having been any table of logs in any edition of it for quite a long time.

Re: Mathematics all-in-one cheat-sheet (2013) [pdf]

#78
When I was studying mathematical physics, my classmates and I made similar quick reference notes in latex. Based on a cursory look, it seems to be missing some important complex analysis and abstract algebra/lie theory results (although I haven't read what the author studied).

Re: Mathematics all-in-one cheat-sheet (2013) [pdf]

#79
post #72

I really didn't want to be that guy, and props for the author for such comprehensive reference work, but god, what an appalling typography. Bad tables with too many lines bitmap formulas with misadjusted size, poor spacing, ugly font... Almost everything that could be wrong is wrong.

I came here to say the same thing. Looks like the author did not use a good authoring tool to produce good math output.

I generally take notes like this with LaTeX and compile them to PDF but PDFs can be large and if committing to a Git repo can lead to large .git directories. The BasicTeX package for Mac (brew install basictex) has worked well for me: http://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html

These days I also take math notes as plain HTML files containing Markdown and LaTeX, then render with the TeXme one-liner here: https://github.com/susam/texme

I guess what the OP has done here is take all the notes in Word or some other WYSIWYG document editor not specialized for mathematical typography and converted the whole document to PDF. This won't lead to good results. It is absolutely necessary to use tools specialized for mathematical typography to write and publish math.

By the way, is there anyway to create high quality math distributables that are both self-contained and lightweight?

Re: Mathematics all-in-one cheat-sheet (2013) [pdf]

#80
post #57

Cheat-sheet we were allowed to use during math exams at university: Theoretical Computer Science Cheat Sheet https://www.tug.org/texshowcase/cheat.pdf It's 10 pages, so 3 papers with one page free for something that might be missing.

I often used this when solving assignments and can recommend it to any computer science student.
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