12 ms·

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

233 points by georgecmu 5y ago

bluenose69 5y ago
Nothing will make me switch me from my fountain pen on good paper, but this site got me to actually check out ultiSnips, which is amazing.
dang 5y ago
Discussed at the time: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19448678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19448678 - March 2019 (221 comments) How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19440652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19440652 - March 2019 (6 comments)
eyeball 5y ago
Seems like a bad idea for recall.
yaantc 5y ago
Something similar for Emacs, inspired by this Vim method: https://karthinks.com/software/latex-input-for-impatient-scholars/ https://karthinks.com/software/latex-input-for-impatient-sch... Not my field, but I find it interesting to see how it is possible to optimize one environment for specific tasks.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
veltas 5y ago
Never explained how diagrams e.g. top of this page[1] can be done mid-lecture. [1] https://castel.dev/static/cb323a2ec665d98f93f78e13d3972e0e/41b08/ca3.png https://castel.dev/static/cb323a2ec665d98f93f78e13d3972e0e/4...
- rcap 5y ago
  See https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/ https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/
strulovich 5y ago
For the majority of my studies I took notes in Word and it’s equation editor (LaTeX syntax is most of what you need to know for it) It was great for sharing and searching notes, but definitely challenging. Once in a while when a diagram was needed it would be really challenging to do (no stylus or touchscreen back then), and when a new math symbol showed up for the first time it would be a challenge. In other times it could be useful, like if there’s a lot of matrices being written copy and pasting helps. Overall, it was a good experience since for later math research I needed to know LaTeX well anyhow. But the flexibility of pen and paper can’t be matched.
- axby 5y ago
  I did this back in 2011, though I used OpenOffice (and now I believe it's LibreOffice) at first, its equation editor syntax was a lot like LaTeX. I didn't realize MS Word had a text input option for its equation editor. Eventually I decided to switch to Vim and LaTeX though (I was pretty new to both). The OP's setup looks much fancier than what I did, I just used pdflatex and mupdf. Diagrams I would draw by hand on paper. I am grateful to have my notes in a nice clean searchable pdf now 10 years later, but unfortunately my career in software has yet to have me actually do differential equations again. I have to ask because I miss it so dearly: is there any modern alternative to a 10" netbook like what I had back then? Besides the GPD win that was posted a few days ago. And I don't like the idea of a super expensive tablet with its heavy screen. What do students take notes on now?
  - axby 5y ago
    And despite my love of netbooks from that era, part of what had me switch to Vim/LaTeX was my cheap ~$100 netbook not being very quick with large documents in an editor like LibreOffice. Also a random thought: the netbook had also come with "windows 7 starter edition", which didn't let you change the wallpaper, much to my frustration. They went so far as (I believe) hashing the image, so if you edited it at all then it would show a black screen. [1] I think that was what got me into Linux, despite years of losing access to wifi every time I updated and lost the Broadcom wifi drivers. My current laptop doesn't even have an ethernet port, I wonder how people get into Linux now. [1]: The argument of "this laptop is resource constrained so it needs a simpler version of windows" seems weak when they go to such great lengths to enforce it. Maybe it was more about selling it for cheap and expecting some people to upgrade? Imagine paying $60 for windows for a <$150 netbook. (Maybe it was actually $200, I forget)
jimhefferon 5y ago
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).
- sarosh 5y ago
  Can you explain a bit about your personal note taking/retention process?
  - kenniskrag 5y ago
    In my university we can take photos after a topic was explained. The prof told us, that he wants us to understand the topic and ask questions while he was explaining.
  - jimhefferon 5y ago
    Forgive me, there is nothing to explain. I bring paper and pencil. Boring.
    - a_lost_needle 5y ago
      Take a look at what you do remember easily, and then game your note taking process, so that you add that stimulus/reward to your note taking. Maybe it's paper, maybe it's a computer, maybe it 's a fountain pen. Maybe you're like me and your retention is better if you're fully engaged and not taking notes. I see notes as some see a camera. You're so busy trying to transcribe what you're seeing, you're not fully comprehending it till later, and that's only if you're good at notes, otherwise, you now have a dumbass teaching you when you could have been listening to the litteral expert in their field explain it, paying better attention and understanding it; rather than memorizing it. Once you understand it, you're not memorizing, you're explaining. But that's just how I work. Find what works for you.
      - 5y ago
macintux 5y ago
When I was in college I submitted printed assignments generated with LaTeX; made it easier for the teacher to grade and I was able to do a fair bit of copy/paste. Taking notes in real time, however, is a whole different beast.
hwers 5y ago
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 or handouts after).
- kvakerok 5y ago
  I end up doodling, which I found helps my thought process immensely.
- tomerv 5y ago
  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.
  - ant6n 5y ago
    I used a tablet pc during my math bachelor's (convertible laptop computer with Wacom that existed 2002~2008). A couple years back I still used a Samsung Android tablet with pen (and squid). If I went back to school now I'd probably use an iPad and pen, or perhaps one of those wacom enabled e-readers (remarkable, boox?)
- jason0597 5y ago
  Indeed. Paper still remains king. Or a fancy iPad with a pen if you can afford it, I certainly don't have the money for it.
trinovantes 5y ago
Back in school I did hand written notes in class and retyped them in TeX when preparing for exams. I found this to be the best way for me to learn and retain. I can't imagine live TeXing a graph or tree diagram
notRobot 5y ago
(2019)
- dang 5y ago
  Added. Thanks!
wanderingmind 5y ago
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 proof. Its very hard to even write basic handwritten notes when the lecture goes on without breaking the flow. But then maybe I'm probably just a datapoint around the median.
- __turbobrew__ 5y ago
  I’m the same way. You don’t need notes when you understand the underlying concepts. For me it is better to spend 100% of my concentration on the prof and ask questions when something doesn’t make sense.
  - ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
    That worked for me in courses which provided context, or where proof were short and simple. Then I took a real analysis seminar where very little motivation was provided, and couldn't grok the proof in the time provided. If I had better memory or faster understanding or read ahead I would have been fine... ended up taking detailed notes and trying to fit it all back together after the course, which was not very efficient.
- orforforof 5y ago
  People learn in different ways. Personally, I've always been a "learn by using my hands" person, and in college I was a meticulous note taker. I could never use the method you described, but have met others like that too.
- benrbray 5y ago
  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.
Myrmornis 5y ago
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 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.
- trenchgun 5y ago
  Looks really nice, got to try it out.
- ant6n 5y ago
  When reading the article I was thinking "shit, maybe I have to learn drop emacs and finally learn vim". But then u post your emacs latex plugin and I can perish that thought. (Do any of the features work in the terminal?)
  - Myrmornis 5y ago
    Hi, Emacs can't display images when it is running as a terminal application, so probably only makes sense to use xenops with Emacs running as a real graphical application.
vermilingua 5y ago
Not explained is the live-preview, both of the whole document and the line by line renders; how is this achieved?
markus_zhang 5y ago
Pen and pare are much better, but congratulations for achieving it!
cinntaile 5y ago
I just wish all uni's and colleges recorded their lectures by default. That way we can focus on what's important in class and if we missed something we'd be able to watch the recorded lecture. Trying to write down what's being said and written AND focusing on the lecture at the same time is hard.
cole-k 5y ago
I'm always envious of people who have vim/emacs setups that appear so clean and functional. I just think to my cobbled-together vim setup which both had a long startup and was riddled with idiosyncrasies (both I'm sure caused by my own misconfiguration). I since have migrated to spacemacs, thinking that I could let people more competent than I do the brunt of configuration, but still I have managed to make the startup long and the experience janky. I guess I should either spend more or less time configuring my setups...
- circularfoyers 5y ago
  I'm the same in desiring a preconfigured setup. I think it's similar with how I like the same thing but for a tiling window manager like i3/sway. I suspect there might be a fair few who still prefer the vim or emacs environment that want a preconfigured setup with a basic level of configuration, as is commonly offered by a desktop environment. I like leaving the configuration to someone who I know has a better understanding of all the offerings. I realise this may not appeal to someone who has strong opinions or similar level of understanding as these maintainers however. I might mention, if you hadn't already been aware of it, that SpaceVim exists as well. I really like the concept of layers, the bundling of packages for different features for basic/simple configuration (both SpaceVim/Emacs have this).
  - cole-k 5y ago
    Usually what happens when I try a text editor, shell, etc. is that I'm happy with 95% of the features but there are a few things that nag at me. And inevitably I go down a rabbit hole of hacks until I end up with (an approximation of) my desired feature. If I do that enough times then something ends up wonky until my whole setup is kinda scuffed. As an example pertinent to this post, I repeatedly have to dismiss notifications from pdflatex about some sort of incompatibility with my setup. I think it's relative line numbering, I'm not sure though. My attempts to fix it have only resulted in pdf files occasionally opening as raw code. I will take a look at SpaceVim, though. I've been using vanilla vim for a while to edit personal stuff because I don't want to open spacemacs...
systemvoltage 5y ago
Just kind of a side note - Gilles's work is such a pleasure to browse, worth taking a look. Always made with deep understanding of the content and a spartan taste in design: https://castel.dev/notes https://castel.dev/notes
miki123211 5y ago
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 with blind people before. When I got to college, I started requesting all the materials that students normally get in LaTeX. PDFs generated with pdflatex and similar aren't screen reader accessible, but I could read the LaTeX source code just fine. Obviously, what I write for myself isn't pure, compilable LaTeX, I usually omit the dollar signs, write things like 2^32 instead of 2^{32} etc. By the way, the linked post was almost unreadable to screen readers, the soft dash characters inserted between every syllable made my screen reader say every syllable separately, which breaks the pronunciation rules.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > 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".
  - BbzzbB 5y ago
    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 https://imgur.com/DWRJlKf. I am very confused, what's up with this?
    - jturpin 5y ago
      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!
throwaway81523 5y ago
I did an experimental stint of turning in problem sets in TeX and found it to be very time consuming, though part of the exercise was to write up the solutions carefully and that took time too. I don't think I could possibly take notes in class that way. Also, typing in class would bother people, I expect. One of my professors told me that the best way to do notes was write down normal quick ones in class, but then at home, rewrite the notes in complete sentences including the stuff you remember from the lecture that you didn't originally write down. He said this was a big help in absorbing and retaining the material. It sounded like a good idea, though I was too disorganized to actually try it.
Ratalala 5y ago
vimtex is so nice. At every new LaTeX project I have, I find out something new about its capabilities; I had never heard of the concealment before. EDIT: this seems to actually be vanilla vim. vimtex is still great, though!
joeman1000 5y ago
This showcase in particular is what inspired me to pick up vim and LaTeX, and later pick up emacs. I could not have come back to my degree again without these tools. Many thanks to the author for the inspiration.
MiddleEndian 5y ago
When I was in college, I used Grapher on Mac OS X to take all my math notes. It was very quick and used some LaTeX-like keyboard shortcuts. I'd copy the equations I generated into TextEdit (side note: I still miss the RTFD bundle format now that I use Windows and Linux). No doubt my professors thought I was just dicking around because I was the only person taking notes on a laptop but it was very nice and the results were much more legible than my handwritten notes.
adamisntdead 5y ago
I'm currently a mathematics undergraduate at Cambridge and there's quite a few students who live type notes in various different formats. I think that the majority of the learning curve comes when getting used to the format of writing in LaTeX, and once you have that down (so that typing both prose and mathematics takes little to no effort) you can type notes faster than you can write them - with the small exception of maybe matrices and certain advanced things which slow you down. The benefit of having typed notes at least for me come from being able to search, having a good record of my own understanding of a course and also not having to rely on keeping handwritten notes safe. They also look pretty which is a bonus for studying from them. Examples: - Analysis I (which have been edited): https://adamkelly.me/files/ia-analysis-i/analysis-i.pdf https://adamkelly.me/files/ia-analysis-i/analysis-i.pdf - Graph Theory (not edited but diagrams added): https://adamkelly.me/files/ii-graph-theory/graph-theory.pdf https://adamkelly.me/files/ii-graph-theory/graph-theory.pdf As a side note, one other thing I do is write short 'handouts' on topics that I think I have something to say about. For example https://adamkelly.me/files/handouts/direct-products/direct-product.pdf https://adamkelly.me/files/handouts/direct-products/direct-p....
- teruakohatu 5y ago
  I am always in awe of people like you. I have no idea how someone can type \frac{}{} faster than I can draw a horizontal line (while listening to a lecturer), but I believe you. Meanwhile I use Onenote. I don't have to worry about keeping notes safe, or the stress of trying to type at warpspeed. I would go with a Remarkable tablet but now with subscription pricing it's a non starter.
  - tobmlt 5y ago
    Latex specific ide \frac and auto fill. You can for sure get speedy with practice! Those beautiful graphs now… I ended up using secondary programs to gen images (pdf or whatever) of graphs and such for latex to bring in the usual way. Not as good!
  - vitus 5y ago
    My recollection is that the main speed advantage lay in being able to copy-paste the previous line when working through a derivation. I live-LaTeXed notes for a couple of years in undergrad but eventually went back to pen + paper (approximately all my assignments continued to be typeset, though).
antegamisou 5y ago
This is a very cool setup but in my experience not using pen-and-paper makes comprehension terribly inefficient, if not impossible, during class especially when it comes to subjects like math. Besides, even excessive note-taking can impede the learning process. Best is to pay close attention to what the lecturer says and occasionally write down a few key ideas.
- katzgrau 5y ago
  I was going to say the same. I'd takes notes, but most of my attention was on the professor and what they were saying. When there was something I knew I wouldn't remember, that's when focused switched to taking good notes. Otherwise it consumes an awful lot of brain-powee/attention, and well, there's a textbook if you really want textbook style notes.
Koshkin 5y ago
Somewhat off topic, the very need for students to take notes during a math lecture seems completely idiotic to me, in this day an age when a professor could just share the link to the handout with their students. The margins should be wide enough for the students to be able to “personalize” the notes (they have to study them later anyway, don’t they?), or the notes could be distributed in the source format to begin with.
- CDSlice 5y ago
  As someone who is currently taking a math class, the point of taking notes isn’t to have a record of what was taught. Rather taking notes helps me concentrate on the lecture instead of having my mind wander and for whatever reason hand writing the notes helps the concepts sink into my memory better than just listening to the lecture and reviewing the handouts. A lot of times I’ll take notes and then throw them out in a few days because the handouts and textbook are better for actually reviewing the topics later and the notes have already served their purpose of helping me learn from the lectures.
- yodsanklai 5y ago
  I don't think it's idiotic. Writing makes you think and remember better than just being passive.
sharikous 5y ago
For quick self notes I use Markdown. I found most rendering engines support $math$ these days. Either that or pen-and-paper/tablet/remarkable. Joplin is fantastic for creating and organizing references as long as you don't need advanced layouts. When you need them you can very quickly convert MD syntax to html or latex. On a side note I always wonder who has the time of fine tuning uber-specialized text editor configuration at those levels. Not only that, but also having the burden of maintaining that and the inconvenience of being dependent on a very specific setup. I could see myself doing such an effort only after 4-5 years of daily use and friction.
pugworthy 5y ago
I'm curious about the correlation (or lack of) between this kind of note taking and the ability to talk and type at the same time. I can take high level concept notes, but not details. And I can't talk and type at the same time all. Always figured it was a shared brain thing between the talking and the typing.
jdlyga 5y ago
I tried all sort of ways of taking notes in math class using LaTeX, an iPad, etc. I had the most success using pencil and paper. You want as little friction as possible, especially trying to remember latex syntax. Remember, math been done handwritten for centuries. Unless you're getting syntax help like with programming, pencil and paper is a safe bet.
7thaccount 5y ago
I always hated trying to take notes and pay attention at the same time. Can someone explain why teachers just make the lecture notes available so students can just listen to the lecture and review the notes later?
dhosek 5y ago
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.
- gjulianm 5y ago
  > but everyone else is better served by handwritten notes. Completely disagree here. You need to find the setup that works for you, and for a lot of people that setup will be taking notes in a computer. And I know this because in my class me and a few friends took computer notes, and we did really well. In my personal case, my handwriting is terrible and gets worse by the hour. By the fourth lecture of the day, my paper notes were an incomprehensible mess. Reformatting, organizing and sorting those notes took quite some time and then searching or referencing other pages was impossible. When taking LaTeX notes, I could write at the same speed as when I was writing by hand, got less tiring, could pay more attention to the lecture (I can just go on and write things on the computer without looking and worry about them later, but I can't handwrite without looking). Then later I could go back, rewrite the parts that needed rewriting, reference the parts that needed referencing, put graphs, paste links, whatever. And it was really helpful to have a document where I could iterate and improve the notes as my knowledge and understanding of the contents improved. You know how they say that you don't really understand something until you can explain it? Well, rewriting my notes was my process to understand things. And it would be impossible to have done it if I had to take paper notes. Also, I could do the exercises on the same document (in an appendix) and quickly reference the theorems, and also work with my friends to correct/review the exercises. Again, impossible to do with paper notes.
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ykonstant 5y ago
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 https://github.com/ykonstant1/dotfiles [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/jtjol5/cinnamon_latex_workflow_in_vim/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/jtjol5/cinnamon_l...
- necovek 5y ago
  Your classes sound amazing. In my experience though, seldom a professor or a TA tries that hard to prepare an engaging lesson. And certainly, it'd be a shame to be busy "live-latexing" notes for your class, but I think in the vast majority of classes, for someone really adept at it, it might work.
- qmmmur 5y ago
  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.
  - ykonstant 5y ago
    Go ahead!
- 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gjulianm 5y ago
An important part missing in this is to add symbols to your keyboard layout. Instead of typing \alpha, just type α. To type \cap, write ∩. I used a StackOverflow answer [1] to build a key layout [2] for my Spanish mac keyboard, but this should be easily replicated for other systems and languages 1: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/110042/entering-unicode-math-symbols-into-latex-direct-from-keyboard-on-a-mac#110043 https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/110042/entering-unic... 2: https://github.com/gjulianm/MathUnicode https://github.com/gjulianm/MathUnicode
- dotancohen 5y ago
  For Linux users, see this Unix.SE post for adding new symbols to a keyboard layout: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/674997/new-keyboard-layout-variant-not-detected-after-reboot https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/674997/new-keyboard... Note that is my own self-answered question and answer, after having difficulty. For completeness' sake all steps involved in adding new symbols to the keyboard - desktop agnostic - are included in that question.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
paper, pencil. review, rewrite. It's not just the math notation. Often there are diagrams, that illustrate, or facilitate mathematical reasoning.
WolfOliver 5y ago
I've created and use www.monsterwriter.app It's a modern LyX

233 points by georgecmu 5y ago

Nothing will make me switch me from my fountain pen on good paper, but this site got me to actually check out ultiSnips, which is amazing.

dang 5y ago

Discussed at the time: How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19448678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19448678 - March 2019 (221 comments) How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19440652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19440652 - March 2019 (6 comments)

eyeball 5y ago

Seems like a bad idea for recall.

yaantc 5y ago

Something similar for Emacs, inspired by this Vim method: https://karthinks.com/software/latex-input-for-impatient-scholars/ https://karthinks.com/software/latex-input-for-impatient-sch... Not my field, but I find it interesting to see how it is possible to optimize one environment for specific tasks.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

veltas 5y ago

Never explained how diagrams e.g. top of this page[1] can be done mid-lecture. [1] https://castel.dev/static/cb323a2ec665d98f93f78e13d3972e0e/41b08/ca3.png https://castel.dev/static/cb323a2ec665d98f93f78e13d3972e0e/4...

rcap 5y ago
See https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/ https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/

strulovich 5y ago

For the majority of my studies I took notes in Word and it’s equation editor (LaTeX syntax is most of what you need to know for it) It was great for sharing and searching notes, but definitely challenging. Once in a while when a diagram was needed it would be really challenging to do (no stylus or touchscreen back then), and when a new math symbol showed up for the first time it would be a challenge. In other times it could be useful, like if there’s a lot of matrices being written copy and pasting helps. Overall, it was a good experience since for later math research I needed to know LaTeX well anyhow. But the flexibility of pen and paper can’t be matched.

axby 5y ago
I did this back in 2011, though I used OpenOffice (and now I believe it's LibreOffice) at first, its equation editor syntax was a lot like LaTeX. I didn't realize MS Word had a text input option for its equation editor. Eventually I decided to switch to Vim and LaTeX though (I was pretty new to both). The OP's setup looks much fancier than what I did, I just used pdflatex and mupdf. Diagrams I would draw by hand on paper. I am grateful to have my notes in a nice clean searchable pdf now 10 years later, but unfortunately my career in software has yet to have me actually do differential equations again. I have to ask because I miss it so dearly: is there any modern alternative to a 10" netbook like what I had back then? Besides the GPD win that was posted a few days ago. And I don't like the idea of a super expensive tablet with its heavy screen. What do students take notes on now?
- axby 5y ago
  And despite my love of netbooks from that era, part of what had me switch to Vim/LaTeX was my cheap ~$100 netbook not being very quick with large documents in an editor like LibreOffice. Also a random thought: the netbook had also come with "windows 7 starter edition", which didn't let you change the wallpaper, much to my frustration. They went so far as (I believe) hashing the image, so if you edited it at all then it would show a black screen. [1] I think that was what got me into Linux, despite years of losing access to wifi every time I updated and lost the Broadcom wifi drivers. My current laptop doesn't even have an ethernet port, I wonder how people get into Linux now. [1]: The argument of "this laptop is resource constrained so it needs a simpler version of windows" seems weak when they go to such great lengths to enforce it. Maybe it was more about selling it for cheap and expecting some people to upgrade? Imagine paying $60 for windows for a <$150 netbook. (Maybe it was actually $200, I forget)

jimhefferon 5y ago

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).

sarosh 5y ago
Can you explain a bit about your personal note taking/retention process?
- kenniskrag 5y ago
  In my university we can take photos after a topic was explained. The prof told us, that he wants us to understand the topic and ask questions while he was explaining.
- jimhefferon 5y ago
  Forgive me, there is nothing to explain. I bring paper and pencil. Boring.
  - a_lost_needle 5y ago
    Take a look at what you do remember easily, and then game your note taking process, so that you add that stimulus/reward to your note taking. Maybe it's paper, maybe it's a computer, maybe it 's a fountain pen. Maybe you're like me and your retention is better if you're fully engaged and not taking notes. I see notes as some see a camera. You're so busy trying to transcribe what you're seeing, you're not fully comprehending it till later, and that's only if you're good at notes, otherwise, you now have a dumbass teaching you when you could have been listening to the litteral expert in their field explain it, paying better attention and understanding it; rather than memorizing it. Once you understand it, you're not memorizing, you're explaining. But that's just how I work. Find what works for you.
    - 5y ago

macintux 5y ago

When I was in college I submitted printed assignments generated with LaTeX; made it easier for the teacher to grade and I was able to do a fair bit of copy/paste. Taking notes in real time, however, is a whole different beast.

hwers 5y ago

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 or handouts after).

kvakerok 5y ago
I end up doodling, which I found helps my thought process immensely.
tomerv 5y ago
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.
- ant6n 5y ago
  I used a tablet pc during my math bachelor's (convertible laptop computer with Wacom that existed 2002~2008). A couple years back I still used a Samsung Android tablet with pen (and squid). If I went back to school now I'd probably use an iPad and pen, or perhaps one of those wacom enabled e-readers (remarkable, boox?)
jason0597 5y ago
Indeed. Paper still remains king. Or a fancy iPad with a pen if you can afford it, I certainly don't have the money for it.

trinovantes 5y ago

Back in school I did hand written notes in class and retyped them in TeX when preparing for exams. I found this to be the best way for me to learn and retain. I can't imagine live TeXing a graph or tree diagram

notRobot 5y ago

(2019)

dang 5y ago
Added. Thanks!

wanderingmind 5y ago

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 proof. Its very hard to even write basic handwritten notes when the lecture goes on without breaking the flow. But then maybe I'm probably just a datapoint around the median.

__turbobrew__ 5y ago
I’m the same way. You don’t need notes when you understand the underlying concepts. For me it is better to spend 100% of my concentration on the prof and ask questions when something doesn’t make sense.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
  That worked for me in courses which provided context, or where proof were short and simple. Then I took a real analysis seminar where very little motivation was provided, and couldn't grok the proof in the time provided. If I had better memory or faster understanding or read ahead I would have been fine... ended up taking detailed notes and trying to fit it all back together after the course, which was not very efficient.
orforforof 5y ago
People learn in different ways. Personally, I've always been a "learn by using my hands" person, and in college I was a meticulous note taker. I could never use the method you described, but have met others like that too.
benrbray 5y ago
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.

Myrmornis 5y ago

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 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.

trenchgun 5y ago
Looks really nice, got to try it out.
ant6n 5y ago
When reading the article I was thinking "shit, maybe I have to learn drop emacs and finally learn vim". But then u post your emacs latex plugin and I can perish that thought. (Do any of the features work in the terminal?)
- Myrmornis 5y ago
  Hi, Emacs can't display images when it is running as a terminal application, so probably only makes sense to use xenops with Emacs running as a real graphical application.

vermilingua 5y ago

Not explained is the live-preview, both of the whole document and the line by line renders; how is this achieved?

markus_zhang 5y ago

Pen and pare are much better, but congratulations for achieving it!

cinntaile 5y ago

I just wish all uni's and colleges recorded their lectures by default. That way we can focus on what's important in class and if we missed something we'd be able to watch the recorded lecture. Trying to write down what's being said and written AND focusing on the lecture at the same time is hard.

cole-k 5y ago

I'm always envious of people who have vim/emacs setups that appear so clean and functional. I just think to my cobbled-together vim setup which both had a long startup and was riddled with idiosyncrasies (both I'm sure caused by my own misconfiguration). I since have migrated to spacemacs, thinking that I could let people more competent than I do the brunt of configuration, but still I have managed to make the startup long and the experience janky. I guess I should either spend more or less time configuring my setups...

circularfoyers 5y ago
I'm the same in desiring a preconfigured setup. I think it's similar with how I like the same thing but for a tiling window manager like i3/sway. I suspect there might be a fair few who still prefer the vim or emacs environment that want a preconfigured setup with a basic level of configuration, as is commonly offered by a desktop environment. I like leaving the configuration to someone who I know has a better understanding of all the offerings. I realise this may not appeal to someone who has strong opinions or similar level of understanding as these maintainers however. I might mention, if you hadn't already been aware of it, that SpaceVim exists as well. I really like the concept of layers, the bundling of packages for different features for basic/simple configuration (both SpaceVim/Emacs have this).
- cole-k 5y ago
  Usually what happens when I try a text editor, shell, etc. is that I'm happy with 95% of the features but there are a few things that nag at me. And inevitably I go down a rabbit hole of hacks until I end up with (an approximation of) my desired feature. If I do that enough times then something ends up wonky until my whole setup is kinda scuffed. As an example pertinent to this post, I repeatedly have to dismiss notifications from pdflatex about some sort of incompatibility with my setup. I think it's relative line numbering, I'm not sure though. My attempts to fix it have only resulted in pdf files occasionally opening as raw code. I will take a look at SpaceVim, though. I've been using vanilla vim for a while to edit personal stuff because I don't want to open spacemacs...

systemvoltage 5y ago

Just kind of a side note - Gilles's work is such a pleasure to browse, worth taking a look. Always made with deep understanding of the content and a spartan taste in design: https://castel.dev/notes https://castel.dev/notes

miki123211 5y ago

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 with blind people before. When I got to college, I started requesting all the materials that students normally get in LaTeX. PDFs generated with pdflatex and similar aren't screen reader accessible, but I could read the LaTeX source code just fine. Obviously, what I write for myself isn't pure, compilable LaTeX, I usually omit the dollar signs, write things like 2^32 instead of 2^{32} etc. By the way, the linked post was almost unreadable to screen readers, the soft dash characters inserted between every syllable made my screen reader say every syllable separately, which breaks the pronunciation rules.

wolverine876 5y ago
> 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".
- BbzzbB 5y ago
  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 https://imgur.com/DWRJlKf. I am very confused, what's up with this?
  - jturpin 5y ago
    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!

throwaway81523 5y ago

I did an experimental stint of turning in problem sets in TeX and found it to be very time consuming, though part of the exercise was to write up the solutions carefully and that took time too. I don't think I could possibly take notes in class that way. Also, typing in class would bother people, I expect. One of my professors told me that the best way to do notes was write down normal quick ones in class, but then at home, rewrite the notes in complete sentences including the stuff you remember from the lecture that you didn't originally write down. He said this was a big help in absorbing and retaining the material. It sounded like a good idea, though I was too disorganized to actually try it.

Ratalala 5y ago

vimtex is so nice. At every new LaTeX project I have, I find out something new about its capabilities; I had never heard of the concealment before. EDIT: this seems to actually be vanilla vim. vimtex is still great, though!

joeman1000 5y ago

This showcase in particular is what inspired me to pick up vim and LaTeX, and later pick up emacs. I could not have come back to my degree again without these tools. Many thanks to the author for the inspiration.

MiddleEndian 5y ago

When I was in college, I used Grapher on Mac OS X to take all my math notes. It was very quick and used some LaTeX-like keyboard shortcuts. I'd copy the equations I generated into TextEdit (side note: I still miss the RTFD bundle format now that I use Windows and Linux). No doubt my professors thought I was just dicking around because I was the only person taking notes on a laptop but it was very nice and the results were much more legible than my handwritten notes.

adamisntdead 5y ago

I'm currently a mathematics undergraduate at Cambridge and there's quite a few students who live type notes in various different formats. I think that the majority of the learning curve comes when getting used to the format of writing in LaTeX, and once you have that down (so that typing both prose and mathematics takes little to no effort) you can type notes faster than you can write them - with the small exception of maybe matrices and certain advanced things which slow you down. The benefit of having typed notes at least for me come from being able to search, having a good record of my own understanding of a course and also not having to rely on keeping handwritten notes safe. They also look pretty which is a bonus for studying from them. Examples: - Analysis I (which have been edited): https://adamkelly.me/files/ia-analysis-i/analysis-i.pdf https://adamkelly.me/files/ia-analysis-i/analysis-i.pdf - Graph Theory (not edited but diagrams added): https://adamkelly.me/files/ii-graph-theory/graph-theory.pdf https://adamkelly.me/files/ii-graph-theory/graph-theory.pdf As a side note, one other thing I do is write short 'handouts' on topics that I think I have something to say about. For example https://adamkelly.me/files/handouts/direct-products/direct-product.pdf https://adamkelly.me/files/handouts/direct-products/direct-p....

teruakohatu 5y ago
I am always in awe of people like you. I have no idea how someone can type \frac{}{} faster than I can draw a horizontal line (while listening to a lecturer), but I believe you. Meanwhile I use Onenote. I don't have to worry about keeping notes safe, or the stress of trying to type at warpspeed. I would go with a Remarkable tablet but now with subscription pricing it's a non starter.
- tobmlt 5y ago
  Latex specific ide \frac and auto fill. You can for sure get speedy with practice! Those beautiful graphs now… I ended up using secondary programs to gen images (pdf or whatever) of graphs and such for latex to bring in the usual way. Not as good!
- vitus 5y ago
  My recollection is that the main speed advantage lay in being able to copy-paste the previous line when working through a derivation. I live-LaTeXed notes for a couple of years in undergrad but eventually went back to pen + paper (approximately all my assignments continued to be typeset, though).

antegamisou 5y ago

This is a very cool setup but in my experience not using pen-and-paper makes comprehension terribly inefficient, if not impossible, during class especially when it comes to subjects like math. Besides, even excessive note-taking can impede the learning process. Best is to pay close attention to what the lecturer says and occasionally write down a few key ideas.

katzgrau 5y ago
I was going to say the same. I'd takes notes, but most of my attention was on the professor and what they were saying. When there was something I knew I wouldn't remember, that's when focused switched to taking good notes. Otherwise it consumes an awful lot of brain-powee/attention, and well, there's a textbook if you really want textbook style notes.

Koshkin 5y ago

Somewhat off topic, the very need for students to take notes during a math lecture seems completely idiotic to me, in this day an age when a professor could just share the link to the handout with their students. The margins should be wide enough for the students to be able to “personalize” the notes (they have to study them later anyway, don’t they?), or the notes could be distributed in the source format to begin with.

CDSlice 5y ago
As someone who is currently taking a math class, the point of taking notes isn’t to have a record of what was taught. Rather taking notes helps me concentrate on the lecture instead of having my mind wander and for whatever reason hand writing the notes helps the concepts sink into my memory better than just listening to the lecture and reviewing the handouts. A lot of times I’ll take notes and then throw them out in a few days because the handouts and textbook are better for actually reviewing the topics later and the notes have already served their purpose of helping me learn from the lectures.
yodsanklai 5y ago
I don't think it's idiotic. Writing makes you think and remember better than just being passive.

sharikous 5y ago

For quick self notes I use Markdown. I found most rendering engines support $math$ these days. Either that or pen-and-paper/tablet/remarkable. Joplin is fantastic for creating and organizing references as long as you don't need advanced layouts. When you need them you can very quickly convert MD syntax to html or latex. On a side note I always wonder who has the time of fine tuning uber-specialized text editor configuration at those levels. Not only that, but also having the burden of maintaining that and the inconvenience of being dependent on a very specific setup. I could see myself doing such an effort only after 4-5 years of daily use and friction.

pugworthy 5y ago

I'm curious about the correlation (or lack of) between this kind of note taking and the ability to talk and type at the same time. I can take high level concept notes, but not details. And I can't talk and type at the same time all. Always figured it was a shared brain thing between the talking and the typing.

jdlyga 5y ago

I tried all sort of ways of taking notes in math class using LaTeX, an iPad, etc. I had the most success using pencil and paper. You want as little friction as possible, especially trying to remember latex syntax. Remember, math been done handwritten for centuries. Unless you're getting syntax help like with programming, pencil and paper is a safe bet.

7thaccount 5y ago

I always hated trying to take notes and pay attention at the same time. Can someone explain why teachers just make the lecture notes available so students can just listen to the lecture and review the notes later?

dhosek 5y ago

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.

gjulianm 5y ago
> but everyone else is better served by handwritten notes. Completely disagree here. You need to find the setup that works for you, and for a lot of people that setup will be taking notes in a computer. And I know this because in my class me and a few friends took computer notes, and we did really well. In my personal case, my handwriting is terrible and gets worse by the hour. By the fourth lecture of the day, my paper notes were an incomprehensible mess. Reformatting, organizing and sorting those notes took quite some time and then searching or referencing other pages was impossible. When taking LaTeX notes, I could write at the same speed as when I was writing by hand, got less tiring, could pay more attention to the lecture (I can just go on and write things on the computer without looking and worry about them later, but I can't handwrite without looking). Then later I could go back, rewrite the parts that needed rewriting, reference the parts that needed referencing, put graphs, paste links, whatever. And it was really helpful to have a document where I could iterate and improve the notes as my knowledge and understanding of the contents improved. You know how they say that you don't really understand something until you can explain it? Well, rewriting my notes was my process to understand things. And it would be impossible to have done it if I had to take paper notes. Also, I could do the exercises on the same document (in an appendix) and quickly reference the theorems, and also work with my friends to correct/review the exercises. Again, impossible to do with paper notes.

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ykonstant 5y ago

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 https://github.com/ykonstant1/dotfiles [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/jtjol5/cinnamon_latex_workflow_in_vim/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/jtjol5/cinnamon_l...

necovek 5y ago
Your classes sound amazing. In my experience though, seldom a professor or a TA tries that hard to prepare an engaging lesson. And certainly, it'd be a shame to be busy "live-latexing" notes for your class, but I think in the vast majority of classes, for someone really adept at it, it might work.
qmmmur 5y ago
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.
- ykonstant 5y ago
  Go ahead!
5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

gjulianm 5y ago

An important part missing in this is to add symbols to your keyboard layout. Instead of typing \alpha, just type α. To type \cap, write ∩. I used a StackOverflow answer [1] to build a key layout [2] for my Spanish mac keyboard, but this should be easily replicated for other systems and languages 1: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/110042/entering-unicode-math-symbols-into-latex-direct-from-keyboard-on-a-mac#110043 https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/110042/entering-unic... 2: https://github.com/gjulianm/MathUnicode https://github.com/gjulianm/MathUnicode

dotancohen 5y ago
For Linux users, see this Unix.SE post for adding new symbols to a keyboard layout: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/674997/new-keyboard-layout-variant-not-detected-after-reboot https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/674997/new-keyboard... Note that is my own self-answered question and answer, after having difficulty. For completeness' sake all steps involved in adding new symbols to the keyboard - desktop agnostic - are included in that question.

jonnycomputer 5y ago

paper, pencil. review, rewrite. It's not just the math notation. Often there are diagrams, that illustrate, or facilitate mathematical reasoning.

WolfOliver 5y ago

I've created and use www.monsterwriter.app It's a modern LyX