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I agree; I get the impression that physics and math still do things in The Old Way of science; if we still communicated that way, modern physicists would be wri
by beowulfey 5y ago
I agree; I get the impression that physics and math still do things in The Old Way of science; if we still communicated that way, modern physicists would be writing letters to each other critiquing work and offering advice. Somehow the life sciences became stuck in the “publish or perish” mentality.
Just out of curiosity, you mention everyone uses Word in the life sciences—what is used in physics? LaTeX? I also have to use Word, and hate it.
- gmueckl 5y agoNot the OP, but in my experience, when you are doing math, physics or CS and don't use LaTeX, you'll be looked at sideways. There is virtually no alternative when it comes to typesetting advanced maths.
- PartiallyTyped 5y agoI have friends who used MS Word to write their thesis in CS undergrad. Surprisingly it is possible to write math in a LaTeX-like fashion and they show up quite well. I have had more trouble aligning things with Word than with LaTeX so I kinda looked at them sideways.
- gmueckl 5y agoThe math support in MS Office is sufficient for some tasks and it's actually very usable then. But I find it woefully underpowered when it comes to typesetting advanced stuff. I come up against its limit quite regularly (I need to make my slides in Powerpoint for $REASONS). Also, annoyingly, it slows down significantly when there are lots of nested blocks (e.g. subscripts, superscripts, which I need often).
- wizzwizz4 5y agoMathML / very neat handwritten formulae are decent alternatives.
- madars 5y agoYep. "The authors don't use TeX" is also sign #1 on Scott Aaronson's "Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough is Wrong" https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304 > This simple test (suggested by Dave Bacon) already catches at least 60% of wrong mathematical breakthroughs. David Deutsch and Lov Grover are among the only known false positives.
- refactor_master 5y agoWithout precision, recall and a proper problem formulation,”60%” is pretty bad, if not outright meaningless.
- dieortin 5y agoYes, LaTeX is what’s most widely used in physics.
- cozzyd 5y agoPerhaps unfairly, it's hard to take physics papers not written in LaTeX seriously. At least within particle physics and astrophysics/cosmology... I don't really read papers from other fields. Note that, arXiv makes you post LaTeX sources if it detects that it's a LaTeX document, and not everyone remembers to redact perhaps not meant to be public comments :).