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

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

#71

Post by kevmo314 »

wanderingmind wrote: post #17

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…

Our professors would often mention tips and tricks that weren't in the textbook. It's only through lecture notes that we could remember them given how much information there was.

After all, if the lecture is just the textbook, why bother going at that point? :)

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

#72

Post by ykonstant »

I would advise against trying to typeset lectures live, at least for my courses. I structure my lectures as an abstract detective work: start with a motivating problem or example, experiment with it, distill the key ideas, formalize them into definitions, deduce consequences (theorems, new problems). I expect my students to be active participants at each step. Paper notes work well for this, because they are both low overheard and sufficiently free-form. From my experience, students that typeset or try to write overly formal notes during class miss that crucial live narrative of my lectures; that makes me sad because I spend a ton of effort in this story-building.

I do think proper typesetting is a great idea afterwards, during its own dedicated phase; it is like the report-building stage of the detective work, where findings are revisited and structured so the detective can reflect on the case, compare it with others and have a reference for the future.

For anyone interested in my very opinionated patterns for latex typesetting in Vim, I have a github page with vim templates [0] and some demos at reddit [1].

[0] https://github.com/ykonstant1/dotfiles

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/jtjol5/cinnamon_l...

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

#73

Post by wolverine876 »

BbzzbB wrote: post #65
wolverine876 wrote: post #40

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?

The character is Unicode U+00AD, the soft hyphen: "= discretionary hyphen" / "commonly abbreviated as SHY" / "an invisible format character indicating a possible hyphenation location"

https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf

I know of it, but apparently I've never previously pasted text using it into my text editor, because it's displayed there as a hyphen (though it is still U+00AD).

I'm wondering what CMS/editor outputs so many SHY characters.

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

#74

Post by trenchgun »

Myrmornis wrote: post #20

Plug: I recently created a new LaTeX editing environment for Emacs with automatic inline rendering of math, TikZ diagrams, and tables: https://github.com/dandavison/xenops It creates plain LaTeX files that can be shared with non-Emacs users, but also works with org-mode. Math preview images are SVG by default and are crisp on high res / retina screens.

Looks really nice, got to try it out.

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

#75

Post by 908B64B197 »

miki123211 wrote: post #33

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…

> considering I had to work with teachers who didn't have any experience with blind people before.

Sorry you had to pave the way.

> PDFs generated with pdflatex and similar aren't screen reader accessible, but I could read the LaTeX source code just fine.

That's... sad. Is Word any better?

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

#78

Post by qmmmur »

ykonstant wrote: post #72

I would advise against trying to typeset lectures live, at least for my courses. I structure my lectures as an abstract detective work: start with a motivating problem or example, experiment with it, distill the key ideas, formalize them into definitions, deduce consequences (theorems, new problems). I expect my students to be active participants at each step. Paper notes work well for this, because they are both low…

My research lately is quite meta, and involved in breaking down the various ways in which dissemination of knowledge can be structured. Mind if I borrow this analogy and test it out on some students? Something about it resonated.

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

#79

Post by c0balt »

wolverine876 wrote: post #73
BbzzbB wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The character is Unicode U+00AD, the soft hyphen: "= discretionary hyphen" / "commonly abbreviated as SHY" / "an invisible format character indicating a possible hyphenation location" https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf I know of it, but apparently I've never previously pasted text using it into my text editor, because it's displayed there as a hyphen (though it is still U+00AD). I'm wondering what CMS/edito…

It appears to be a site generated with react+Gatsby. Would be interesting to figure it out which text component is responsible for this odd text decoration

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

#80

Post by pfortuny »

jimhefferon wrote: post #3

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).

Your nick rings some bells. [linear algebra etc].

Indeed, I think the same and am on the very same boat.

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