> Put a loop on the q, to avoid confusion with 9
I already put a loop on g. I put a little "serif" bar on the stem of the q.
Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
51–60 of 79 posts
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#52Reminds me of my first analysis professor. He managed to explain the proofs while writing them with chalk on the blackboard, all equations nice an clean like the Latex in our scripts - while we struggled to keep up with his pace, was impossible for us to copy it all. He came across a bit dry, overstructured, exact, but also kind and humble - maybe like you imagine a German mathematician.
Don't waste time in lecture taking notes. Pay attention and think.
Save your rote copying for homework time.
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#53Do we need everyone to memorize these guidelines or do we need an alphabet that is designed to be naturally distinguishable despite stylistic differences? I feel like with cursive and handwriting focus going out of style, it isn’t practical to expect convention to be followed more strictly than it already is(n’t).
Your idea is great but impossible.
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#54The lowercase zeta isn't right, and the lowercase chi looks just like the xes.
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#55Reminds me of my first analysis professor. He managed to explain the proofs while writing them with chalk on the blackboard, all equations nice an clean like the Latex in our scripts - while we struggled to keep up with his pace, was impossible for us to copy it all. He came across a bit dry, overstructured, exact, but also kind and humble - maybe like you imagine a German mathematician.
Don't waste time in lecture taking notes. Pay attention and think. Save your rote copying for homework time.
Often people take notes because it actually helps memorise and pay attention what's being said, without any intention to read the notes at all afterwards.
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#56Reminds me of my first analysis professor. He managed to explain the proofs while writing them with chalk on the blackboard, all equations nice an clean like the Latex in our scripts - while we struggled to keep up with his pace, was impossible for us to copy it all. He came across a bit dry, overstructured, exact, but also kind and humble - maybe like you imagine a German mathematician.
Don't waste time in lecture taking notes. Pay attention and think. Save your rote copying for homework time.
In my good old maths undergraduate days, in many courses the notes were what was written on the blackboard in lectures. No handouts or slides. There might have been a relevant textbook, but its contents would not be exactly the same as the course.
So my default mode was to copy absolutely everything down (using my own personal set of abbreviations) whilst not necessarily understanding everything. Occasionally I would understand everything in the lecture; occasionally I would understand nothing in the lecture; usually it would be somewhere between the two.
Later I would copy out my notes neatly, but not allowing myself to write anything into my neat copy until I understood it. If it took me a long time to finally see how a step in a proof was justified, I would write the justification into my notes. If I had to revise something to understand the new material, I would write the relevant points I had forgotten into my notes. Hence reading my notes to revise for the exam could be as fast as possible.
To the extent that I perfectly carried out the above system, I gained near to perfect marks. To the extent that I didn't carry out the system, my marks suffered.
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#57When I went back to school I had to take math again, which wasn't my best subject in school. I was determined to figure out why I could understand the material, yet consistently never quite did as well as I thought I should have on tests. So I kept a journal of every mistake I made so I could categorize them and understand them. Most of the mistakes were very specific handwriting mistakes, but they were very particul…
My advice is actually that mistake journal: it was the single best thing I ever did for a math class. Figure out what mistakes are actually happening and develop a system or habit to avoid that actual mistake.
I've never heard of this before. That's a very cool idea.
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#58I wish we'd been taught this in high school. One habit I did learn in high school is writing x as two 'c' shapes in a mirror image. This is clearly an x rather than a multiplication symbol. I prefer it to the version listed in the article. I find it hard to distinguish the author's X/χ
> One habit I did learn in high school is writing x as two 'c' shapes in a mirror image. This is clearly an x rather than a multiplication symbol. I prefer it to the version listed in the article. This is an unbelievably ugly handwriting quirk which is sadly prevalent in some European countries. If you do this the ghosts of dead calligraphers will come puke on your paper.
Why are people so against it? It literally ressembles x in CMU
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't waste time in lecture taking notes. Pay attention and think. Save your rote copying for homework time.
Often people take notes because it actually helps memorise and pay attention what's being said, without any intention to read the notes at all afterwards.
I'm like this, and many I know. I suspect the actual memorising comes when writing, creating the muscle memory. If not written, I can't ensure I'll remember.
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#60I'm of mixed feelings about all the Greek letters used in physics, math, etc. Eventually (after years of hard learning how to understand the underlying equations physically) I got over the hurdle of them always instantly making any equation more complicated and hard to understand -- and instead seeing them as just constants that could be basically ignored for most of the procedure (in many settings). I do still feel…
> but also always horribly written by students/teachers, and made it even more incomprehensible. Honest question: why does the horribly written matter at all? For all intents and purposes the symbol could be a smiley face or a little drawing of a tree. Indeed, in a freshman course you sometimes have at least one worksheet using trees,cars,stars, apples to make this point. As long as the smiley on page 1 and the smile…
Some (maybe most) people find it easier to remember and comprehend things they can vocalize, so using an inscrutable character, even consistently, can cause problems.