While this is certainly impressive, writing math formulas by hand commits them to memory way more effectively than typing latex commands/snippets. Although, an argument could be made that writing formulas in lecture is negligible compared to the amount of practice required outside of lecture for any mathematics course.
How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim
51–60 of 223 posts
Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim
#52Impressive! For anyone looking to do something similar, but in Sublime, I can recommend the LatexTools[0] plugin, which gives similar live previews of math mode.
I'd never considered embedding figures from Inkscape though.
I also decided that I wanted to keep lecture notes in LaTeX, and the best advice I have for anyone is to just practice. Start from LyX if it helps, but just make sure that you grind down the rough edges. It takes a long time, but like many skills that are worth learning, it takes lots of effort but the payoff is worth it.
Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Glad to see this at the top, agree 100%. I’m definitely going to copy some of OP’s setting and snippets, but not for real time use during a lecture. A textbook is an infinitely better reference than any notes one could take in class. Read the damn book. Lecture time should be for asking questions when you have a freaking live expert professor literally presenting the material to you. Ask all the small, nuanced questi…
That's fine amd dandy from a US perspective, but many European universities are different. I don't know about this guy's exact class, but some (many?) undergrad classes are 500 people in a lecture hall with the professor orating, no textbook, and the content on the exam is pretty much whatever was covered during the lectures. So accurate note taking is very important because those notes essentially are your textbook.…
The lectures will contain content from text books, even if they aren't referenced. Reading around the topic will give a better understanding and better results.
Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd still have to transcribe them, and you'd miss what's on the blackboard.
onenote can transcribe in real time and save the audio recording as well... you can even save notes at particular timestamps so you can mark something you didn't understand for later. all of these things are solved problems
Note: Europe: the continent where most of the lectures are still not in English. And where are many languages. Not to mention the accents and the dialects in the same non-English language.
I also doubt you are aware how seriously distorted the result of the speech to text conversion would be for a non-professional recording of any non-trivial lecture given in English (e.g. domain specific terms).
Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> mechanical task of taking notes rather than actually absorbing and engaging with the content The mechanical task of taking notes is one of the most important parts of actually absorbing the material. It is not an either-or. Hearing/seeing the information, processing it in a way that makes sense to you individually, and then mechanically writing it down in a legible manner is one of the main methods that your brain…
> There are actually even studies [2] that show that tools that assist in more efficient note taking, such as taking notes via typing rather than by hand, are actually detrimental to absorbing information, as it makes it easier for you to effectively pass the information directly from your ears to your computer without actually doing the processing that is required when writing notes by hand. This might very well be…
This depends heavily on the country's educational system.
I have gone through most of my middle-school and some high-school in Italy, and after that completed high-school in Moldova. Classes in Moldova were exactly how you described, and I hated it, while in Italy it was exactly the opposite.
Having the teacher explaining and expanding on the content in the course books while students take their own personalized notes is much more efficient and productive.
Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim
#56This is really neat. But for me, if typing on a keyboard becomes just as functional as writing, I would still choose paper and pencil for two reasons: no power is required and it effortlessly autosaves.
Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim
#57As a feat in itself this is definitely very impressive, but I wonder if it's really worth anyone's time to spend precious lecture time with your mind fully occupied in the mechanical task of taking notes rather than actually absorbing and engaging with the content. Especially for an extremely content-dense subject like Mathematics, where you need all your concentration just to process what you are reading and follow…
But surely taking notes on the fly when you have been barely introduced to the subject isn't going to help with that.
I found that taking structured, detailed notes in lectures forced me to pay close attention & work constantly to keep up with the lecturer. For the courses I did that for, it felt like it was equivalent to doing an entire extra revision session with the lecture material for me - I had to do much less work to go over the material after the lecture in order to make sure I understood it, so it was a far more efficient use of my time that just 'attending' the lectures and then doing revision work afterwards.
Some people can maintain that level of connection with the lecture without taking notes of course, but that’s what worked for me.
Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim
#58As a feat in itself this is definitely very impressive, but I wonder if it's really worth anyone's time to spend precious lecture time with your mind fully occupied in the mechanical task of taking notes rather than actually absorbing and engaging with the content. Especially for an extremely content-dense subject like Mathematics, where you need all your concentration just to process what you are reading and follow…
The only alternative I see is getting the lecture notes from your professor. I had one (math) lecturer who used to make his notes on the fly with his convertible Thinkpad (x230t or similar) and shared those notes with us afterward. In addition, he also had a clean script. That combination was awesome as you could focus on what he was explaining (or take additional notes if necessary).
Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim
#59As a feat in itself this is definitely very impressive, but I wonder if it's really worth anyone's time to spend precious lecture time with your mind fully occupied in the mechanical task of taking notes rather than actually absorbing and engaging with the content. Especially for an extremely content-dense subject like Mathematics, where you need all your concentration just to process what you are reading and follow…
But surely taking notes on the fly when you have been barely introduced to the subject isn't going to help with that. I found that taking structured, detailed notes in lectures forced me to pay close attention & work constantly to keep up with the lecturer. For the courses I did that for, it felt like it was equivalent to doing an entire extra revision session with the lecture material for me - I had to do much less…
I found I couldn’t take notes fast enough. But if learning online, pausing the video and taking notes is very effective for me.
Re: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim
#60I have a similar but simpler setup. The crucial difference in my setup is that instead of using full blown LaTeX, I use TeXMe -- https://github.com/susam/texme -- which supports Markdown and LaTeX.
So I write plain text files with Markdown + LaTeX, slap a single line of TeXMe JavaScript either at the top or bottom, and open the file with browser to see the rendered math.
Like the OP I use Vim too with some customization with :ino and :ab. Nothing beats the editing productivity and convenience of Vim!