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Taking notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (2019)

castel.dev

61–70 of 110 posts

Re: Taking notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (2019)

#63

Maybe I'm missing something but why do I need to write notes like textbook when textbooks already exist. I have only taken applied math courses, but when I go to lectures I'm trying to create a mental model of how the various assumptions, statements and theorems relate to one another. I need to listen to the lecture on the arguments of how the proof works, create examples, counter examples and outliers to test the pr…

For me, typesetting my handwritten notes was part of the learning process. Usually one textbook is not enough for me, I always reference multiple sources (textbook, lecture notes, blog posts, homework problems) when learning so it's helpful to put a condensed version of everything in one place. Textbooks usually have a lot of fluff. My personal notes are also really helpful as reference material later -- three months from now I probably won't remember anything that I read today.

Re: Taking notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (2019)

#64
Typing notes is probably the worst way to encode things into your memory. There's been plenty of research on this and I'm not going to regurgitate it here, but the process of handwriting notes does a lot to help you remember things even if you never look at those notes again. There are people with disabilities that prevent them from handwriting notes, but everyone else is better served by handwritten notes.

Re: Taking notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (2019)

#65

Blind person here. I've been using LaTex for note taking since age 15. Since braille typewriters are heavy and clunky and electronic braille notetakers are expensive, I decided it was the right thing to do pretty early on. I started doing this when I transferred out of blind school. Being able to compile my notes into a PDF was definitely useful, considering I had to work with teachers who didn't have any experience…

> the soft dash characters inserted between every syllable What CMS or editor outputs that? It's insane. I tried copying the text into a text editor and it displayed all the dashes: "math-e-mat-ics".

Hum, so when you copy the text and post it into Notepad, it's written with a ton of dashes at places I can't make sense of (not syllables or every word). If you post it in this text box or in Word, it looks normal, I can't even figure out how to share it here (without manually "dashing") except this screenshot : https://imgur.com/DWRJlKf.

I am very confused, what's up with this?

Re: Taking notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (2019)

#66
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the soft dash characters inserted between every syllable What CMS or editor outputs that? It's insane. I tried copying the text into a text editor and it displayed all the dashes: "math-e-mat-ics".

Hum, so when you copy the text and post it into Notepad, it's written with a ton of dashes at places I can't make sense of (not syllables or every word). If you post it in this text box or in Word, it looks normal, I can't even figure out how to share it here (without manually "dashing") except this screenshot : https://imgur.com/DWRJlKf . I am very confused, what's up with this?

I think they are some weird line wrapping hint characters? If I paste it into Pop OS's text editor I can only see the dashes if I shrink the editor to cause word wrapping, and it will insert the dashes at the wrap. It seems like some UTF magic that I hate!

Re: Taking notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (2019)

#67
post #13

I did this too for a while. It's a fun challenge for yourself and a cool way to brag to your friends. Paper is such a better interface though and real time latex takes away too much of your attention from the lecture I found in the end (the best way to attend a lecture is to barely write anything imo, just some rough notes while mostly spending your time in your head - if you missed something look at a friends' notes…

Note-taking is very individual. I found out in university that the act of writing lecture notes helps me focus and remember. Otherwise my mind would drift. In fact, I soon realized that I should write my own lecture notes, even if I never look at them afterwards. And only paper is good enough for fast writing of math.

Re: Taking notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (2019)

#68
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Re: Taking notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (2019)

#69

Obviously the author can take these notes and be a mathematical success. That's amazing. Personally, I confess that I don't have enough cycles to both understand a lecture and live-LaTeX it. (Can I add that I am a math PhD and also very experienced with LaTeX? So if you feel that this may be too much for you, IMHO that's OK).

I typed notes throughout my undergrad, and it worked poorly. Everything in math is slow to type and fast to handwrite: subscripts, exponents, arrows, matrices, Greek letters, labels, diagrams, integrals, fractions. My shorthand omitted all latex conventions (A_0 became A0, arrows became ->), but it wasn't enough.

For non-math classes, typing notes worked well.

Re: Taking notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (2019)

#70
post #69

Obviously the author can take these notes and be a mathematical success. That's amazing. Personally, I confess that I don't have enough cycles to both understand a lecture and live-LaTeX it. (Can I add that I am a math PhD and also very experienced with LaTeX? So if you feel that this may be too much for you, IMHO that's OK).

I typed notes throughout my undergrad, and it worked poorly. Everything in math is slow to type and fast to handwrite: subscripts, exponents, arrows, matrices, Greek letters, labels, diagrams, integrals, fractions. My shorthand omitted all latex conventions (A_0 became A0, arrows became ->), but it wasn't enough. For non-math classes, typing notes worked well.

It's useful to know that \to and \gets are shorthands for \rightarrow and \leftarrow.
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