8 ms·

As 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 occu

As 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 along the logic. There is absolutely no dearth of study material on the internet. It's one thing to take notes as part of your study process. There it helps solidify your understanding. But surely taking notes on the fly when you have been barely introduced to the subject isn't going to help with that.

phoenixstrike 8y ago
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 questions that you can think of in the moment, which you can’t find answers to easily online or in the book. Not to downplay the efficient workflow here, but there is zero chance that this person’s notes are actually better than a real textbook.
- roel_v 8y ago
  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. Hence the small business of students assembling high quality lecture notes and selling them to people who have't been to class (much).
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
    At that point smuggling an audio recorder to the class might lead a better reproduction of the material.
    - wuyishan 8y ago
      audio recording != text book ;) It still would need significant time to transcript, and then OPs workflow comes back into picture ...
    - roel_v 8y ago
      You'd still have to transcribe them, and you'd miss what's on the blackboard.
      - kkarakk 8y ago
        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
        acqq 8y ago
        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).
        kkarakk 8y ago
        yes it was totally my mistake to assume a comment on an english speaking american site would be in the context of american english. also one note picks up domain specific terms just fine in STEM fields... also remember how i said it records audio and logs in real time? yeah, just listen back to it and correct the one or two words it garbles. works just fine. people want to complain not use the solutions that exist. i'm sure writing in latex is trivial and doesn't have you googling issues every 2 hours lol
- ubercow13 8y ago
  >A textbook is an infinitely better reference than any notes one could take in class. but... >Ask all the small, nuanced questions that you can think of in the moment, which you can’t find answers to easily online or in the book. and then what, forget them by the time you go back to the book? Why was the book so good again if it doesn't answer all the questions? It makes more sense to record the answer to those useful questions you ask, maybe in the form of some notes.
- gjulianm 8y ago
  It does not make too much sense to compare textbooks and class notes, specially when you get to higher level classes where the textbooks are reference textbooks, hardly readable by someone who is not already familiar with the material. Your study notes will contain parts of the textbook, of course, but also explanations that are not in the book, maybe examples that you find useful and that might not be in the book, counterexamples, doubts, schematics... No textbook will have 100% of the contents you need to study.
cycrutchfield 8y ago
Not everybody learns in the same way. For myself, I get essentially nothing out of just sitting in a lecture hall listening to a professor drone on. It literally just goes in one ear and out the other. The only way I am able to learn is by reading and by working through the material on my own, either from notes taken in class or (preferably) a textbook. So I can appreciate what OP has done here. I took notes in LaTeX for most of my undergraduate math courses (and some graduate ones), and I found it to be a fairly valuable exercise.
justwalt 8y ago
I did this in a Biochemistry course minus the Vim. It is definitely counterproductive and I started to do better once I switched back to traditional notes.
txcwpalpha 8y ago
> 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 learns. It's one of the primary reasons that taking notes is important in the first place. This is referred to as the "encoding hypothesis" [1]. 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 is why many universities prefer (or even require) notes to be taken by hand, and disallow laptops in class. 1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0361476X78900206 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0361476X78... 2: https://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474525392/attention-students-put-your-laptops-away https://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474525392/attention-students-...
- function_seven 8y ago
  Not that it detracts from your point, but I definitely benefited from notetaking on my computer in school. For an AP History class, I typed up—in outline style (I, II; A, B; 1, 2; a, b; etc)—all my notes on the required reading. At the end of the course, I had a few hundred pages of these notes all printed up. I never had to go back and read any of them. Just the process of typing them up in the first place firmly fixed all the knowledge in my mind. When taking the final and AP test, I could see the notes I had taken in my mind. Writing or typing didn’t make a difference. Just the rephrasing and condensing alone was enough. (Which, again, reënforces your point. I still had to consciously avoid “pass-thru” regurgitation)
  - pjc50 8y ago
    > reënforces What's it like working at the New Yorker? (explanation: this is a joke based on the way nobody uses diaresis marks anymore for any word other than naive, except for the New Yorker style guide. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-... )
ves 8y ago
I live-TeXed notes for some of my math classes and it was absolutely a great idea.
kodz4 8y ago
Learning is learning. He has clearly learnt how to do something. And do it well. The entire article is very clear and well thought out. To me it signals a disciplined and methodical mind, that learns from doing. And we are lucky it's willing to share.
- writepub 8y ago
  Lucky indeed. Who hasn't dreamt of being a stenographer for Math lectures in grad school, using the hardest tools for the job, including the most obscure window manager known to Linux. I mean, if one don't kill a week getting bspm to work on their laptop, is lecture note taking even worth it?
  - kkarakk 8y ago
    i bet he looks really cool doing it though+whoever convinces him to share his notes is on easy street
  - kodz4 8y ago
    You don't need to demean the effort of anyone to put focus on how to do something better.
    - writepub 8y ago
      I'm not demeaning anyone. Sometimes, we can all look at the things we deify, including obscurity and complexity, and laugh a bit at ourselves. Tell me with a straight face that this article isn't quintessential fodder for the show "Silicon Valley". I fully agree with your parent comment that this article is a demonstration of multiple positive traits of the author, I respect him/her a lot. But also, I cannot help but laugh a bit at myself and the others who up-voted the article. That in no way diminishes my respect for anybody, including the author. FYI - I've relied on LaTex for submitting to multiple peer reviewed journals, my thesis and my thesis defense presentation (LaTex Beamer), so I fully understand and appreciate the skill level of the author here Cheers!
pja 8y ago
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.
- quickthrower2 8y ago
  I found I couldn’t take notes fast enough. But if learning online, pausing the video and taking notes is very effective for me.
  - vishnugupta 8y ago
    > I found I couldn’t take notes fast enough. Me neither. However, what I do once in a while is after I've sat through a tutorial (in person or video) I recall and make notes. It helps me immensely to a) Structure my thoughts b) Recall the actual content which reinforces it in my memory. As a student, I always found that writing notes/answers on a topic/question made me understand the concept that much better as well as connect them to form a larger picture (e.g., connect concepts in math and physics).
  - pja 8y ago
    It must be admitted that I got a lot quicker at taking notes in a very short time!
arendtio 8y ago
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).
zelos 8y ago
Exactly. Any decent lecturer is going to give you printed lecture material with this kind of detail already, your written notes are exactly that: notes on the material of important information and extras to help recollection.
magicalhippo 8y ago
I remember things much better if I write them down during a lecture, rather than just listen. I seldom actually used my notes afterwards beyond a quick recap, except in a few classes where the lecturer had prepared the lecture very well. Still, just writing it down allowed me to remember better by orders of magnitude.
gjulianm 8y ago
OP describes exactly how he abstracts away the mechanical task of writing LaTeX and can focus on the content. I did a similar thing in my classes and after a little bit of practice and tool adjustment you just don't think about LaTeX more than you think what pen to use or how to highlight something when handwriting. And precisely because math is so content-dense, having your notes is important, as they will be organized in a similar way to how the content is organized in your mind. Yeah, there is a lot of study material but most of the time, unless the class follows a textbook literally, you'll want your own set of notes with only the class contents, and you'll want to organize that in a way that is easy for you to understand.

phoenixstrike 8y ago

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 questions that you can think of in the moment, which you can’t find answers to easily online or in the book. Not to downplay the efficient workflow here, but there is zero chance that this person’s notes are actually better than a real textbook.

roel_v 8y ago
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. Hence the small business of students assembling high quality lecture notes and selling them to people who have't been to class (much).
- kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
  At that point smuggling an audio recorder to the class might lead a better reproduction of the material.
  - wuyishan 8y ago
    audio recording != text book ;) It still would need significant time to transcript, and then OPs workflow comes back into picture ...
  - roel_v 8y ago
    You'd still have to transcribe them, and you'd miss what's on the blackboard.
    - kkarakk 8y ago
      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
      - acqq 8y ago
        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).
        kkarakk 8y ago
        yes it was totally my mistake to assume a comment on an english speaking american site would be in the context of american english. also one note picks up domain specific terms just fine in STEM fields... also remember how i said it records audio and logs in real time? yeah, just listen back to it and correct the one or two words it garbles. works just fine. people want to complain not use the solutions that exist. i'm sure writing in latex is trivial and doesn't have you googling issues every 2 hours lol
ubercow13 8y ago
>A textbook is an infinitely better reference than any notes one could take in class. but... >Ask all the small, nuanced questions that you can think of in the moment, which you can’t find answers to easily online or in the book. and then what, forget them by the time you go back to the book? Why was the book so good again if it doesn't answer all the questions? It makes more sense to record the answer to those useful questions you ask, maybe in the form of some notes.
gjulianm 8y ago
It does not make too much sense to compare textbooks and class notes, specially when you get to higher level classes where the textbooks are reference textbooks, hardly readable by someone who is not already familiar with the material. Your study notes will contain parts of the textbook, of course, but also explanations that are not in the book, maybe examples that you find useful and that might not be in the book, counterexamples, doubts, schematics... No textbook will have 100% of the contents you need to study.

cycrutchfield 8y ago

Not everybody learns in the same way. For myself, I get essentially nothing out of just sitting in a lecture hall listening to a professor drone on. It literally just goes in one ear and out the other. The only way I am able to learn is by reading and by working through the material on my own, either from notes taken in class or (preferably) a textbook. So I can appreciate what OP has done here. I took notes in LaTeX for most of my undergraduate math courses (and some graduate ones), and I found it to be a fairly valuable exercise.

justwalt 8y ago

I did this in a Biochemistry course minus the Vim. It is definitely counterproductive and I started to do better once I switched back to traditional notes.

txcwpalpha 8y ago

> 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 learns. It's one of the primary reasons that taking notes is important in the first place. This is referred to as the "encoding hypothesis" [1]. 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 is why many universities prefer (or even require) notes to be taken by hand, and disallow laptops in class. 1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0361476X78900206 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0361476X78... 2: https://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474525392/attention-students-put-your-laptops-away https://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474525392/attention-students-...

function_seven 8y ago
Not that it detracts from your point, but I definitely benefited from notetaking on my computer in school. For an AP History class, I typed up—in outline style (I, II; A, B; 1, 2; a, b; etc)—all my notes on the required reading. At the end of the course, I had a few hundred pages of these notes all printed up. I never had to go back and read any of them. Just the process of typing them up in the first place firmly fixed all the knowledge in my mind. When taking the final and AP test, I could see the notes I had taken in my mind. Writing or typing didn’t make a difference. Just the rephrasing and condensing alone was enough. (Which, again, reënforces your point. I still had to consciously avoid “pass-thru” regurgitation)
- pjc50 8y ago
  > reënforces What's it like working at the New Yorker? (explanation: this is a joke based on the way nobody uses diaresis marks anymore for any word other than naive, except for the New Yorker style guide. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-... )

ves 8y ago

I live-TeXed notes for some of my math classes and it was absolutely a great idea.

kodz4 8y ago

Learning is learning. He has clearly learnt how to do something. And do it well. The entire article is very clear and well thought out. To me it signals a disciplined and methodical mind, that learns from doing. And we are lucky it's willing to share.

writepub 8y ago
Lucky indeed. Who hasn't dreamt of being a stenographer for Math lectures in grad school, using the hardest tools for the job, including the most obscure window manager known to Linux. I mean, if one don't kill a week getting bspm to work on their laptop, is lecture note taking even worth it?
- kkarakk 8y ago
  i bet he looks really cool doing it though+whoever convinces him to share his notes is on easy street
- kodz4 8y ago
  You don't need to demean the effort of anyone to put focus on how to do something better.
  - writepub 8y ago
    I'm not demeaning anyone. Sometimes, we can all look at the things we deify, including obscurity and complexity, and laugh a bit at ourselves. Tell me with a straight face that this article isn't quintessential fodder for the show "Silicon Valley". I fully agree with your parent comment that this article is a demonstration of multiple positive traits of the author, I respect him/her a lot. But also, I cannot help but laugh a bit at myself and the others who up-voted the article. That in no way diminishes my respect for anybody, including the author. FYI - I've relied on LaTex for submitting to multiple peer reviewed journals, my thesis and my thesis defense presentation (LaTex Beamer), so I fully understand and appreciate the skill level of the author here Cheers!

pja 8y ago

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.

quickthrower2 8y ago
I found I couldn’t take notes fast enough. But if learning online, pausing the video and taking notes is very effective for me.
- vishnugupta 8y ago
  > I found I couldn’t take notes fast enough. Me neither. However, what I do once in a while is after I've sat through a tutorial (in person or video) I recall and make notes. It helps me immensely to a) Structure my thoughts b) Recall the actual content which reinforces it in my memory. As a student, I always found that writing notes/answers on a topic/question made me understand the concept that much better as well as connect them to form a larger picture (e.g., connect concepts in math and physics).
- pja 8y ago
  It must be admitted that I got a lot quicker at taking notes in a very short time!

arendtio 8y ago

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).

zelos 8y ago

Exactly. Any decent lecturer is going to give you printed lecture material with this kind of detail already, your written notes are exactly that: notes on the material of important information and extras to help recollection.

magicalhippo 8y ago

I remember things much better if I write them down during a lecture, rather than just listen. I seldom actually used my notes afterwards beyond a quick recap, except in a few classes where the lecturer had prepared the lecture very well. Still, just writing it down allowed me to remember better by orders of magnitude.

gjulianm 8y ago

OP describes exactly how he abstracts away the mechanical task of writing LaTeX and can focus on the content. I did a similar thing in my classes and after a little bit of practice and tool adjustment you just don't think about LaTeX more than you think what pen to use or how to highlight something when handwriting. And precisely because math is so content-dense, having your notes is important, as they will be organized in a similar way to how the content is organized in your mind. Yeah, there is a lot of study material but most of the time, unless the class follows a textbook literally, you'll want your own set of notes with only the class contents, and you'll want to organize that in a way that is easy for you to understand.