TeXing Notes/Liv TeXing

Is using LaTeX a waste of time for taking notes live and or writing up homeworks? Has anyone found it's improved their study in any way or is pen and paper the way to go?

Use latex if you are writing an academic journal paper and/or article to be otherwise published or graded.

Why would you use it for anything else?

Writing up homework no. Live notes yes. If you're a newbie you'd probably be wasting more time on getting the command right or be bothered by a compile error if you're using overleaf.

I just use pen and paper for notes. Muscle memory's alright.

Doing homework on it. Some assignments require you to at my uni

>Trainig

I use pen and paper for quick notes, LaTeX for finallized notes that are properly indexed so I can go back to them
\tableofcontents is your friend

Useful for practice. Pro-tip: Better to learn it now when you're learning baby-tier undergrad stuff prior to doing actual mathematics.

I use it for all my (math) homework, and also for the notes I use during exams. I dont take any other quick notes, but when im struggling a bit on a problem ill do it with pen and paper and then transcribe it to latex after im done.

does anyone know of a good pagage to use for category theory btw, the ones I use arre either too limited, or have too much boiler plate.

I read "Basic" as "Brainlet"

I need to stop coming here.

Taking notes with any kind of software is a waste of time. Some research shows that if you write your notes by hand you remember better what you wrote.
If you want to rewrite it like then that's okay through.

taking notes by hand is the best way to remember things, as has been mentioned many times in this thread

i use latex for just about everything else, though, including homework and review notes. it's absolutely gorgeous and much faster than writing now that i've learned it

>taking notes live
That probably isnt even possible you need to type way too fast.

I write down some of my notes I have taken during class. Mostly to train writing in latex and recall some stuff.

Writing your homework in anything other than LaTeX should be an immediate failing grade
But i wouldn't take notes in LaTeX in class that just seems distracting and inefficient and uncomfy

this. you will learn to latex faster than u can format in any other software. writing casual notes is good by hand, but when I'm summarizing results I've proven even just for myself, it is helpful to latex it and not have it tucked away in some notebook with bad handwriting.

>brainlets need to rewrite their notes

I really like having a pdf of my notes. Last term was the first time I had used tex for notes. Perhaps scanning my handwritten copy might be more efficient, but being able to edit my notes and the structure of them is fantastic.

I've found what works best for me is to take concise notes with pen and paper as I'm reading the chapter, and then type up an even more concise latex form of it after doing the homework, to only include what I really need. Always in my own words as well.

Having a pdf of notes on my phone and laptop is great, but so is having a physical notebook of it in my bag available whenever I get down time, with no hassle and the ability to easily annotate anywhere.

you can't type faster than you write? I type faster than most people talk

Dude, seriously. If I have a half-dozen plus pages of straight math for problems, I'm not going to take an extra 6+ hours to re-write everything in latex.

don't get me wrong, I fucking love latex. But its not worth tacking on several extra hours onto each homework assignment for no extra points and no extra understanding of the material.

I just started using LaTex to write up the last problem set for my PChem class. Took way longer than it would have if I wrote it instead but at least I got the basics down. I'm going to make condensed notes to study for finals.

>thinks a 6 page homework assignment is long
>doesn't understand the value of proper and organized presentation of his work
>thinks TeXing an assignment would be longer or more laborious than writing by hand (unless you're doing some gay shit like matrices)
fucking lol stop posting before i fail your pathetic ass

seriously though, study math at any program worth its salt and grad courses will require you to turn in your work TeXed or it simply won't be graded

t. former UChicago mathfag

regardless, if that user at a place where he isn't required to type up his work, the time is essentially wasted if the grade will be the same.

>I type faster than most people talk
if you're serious then you're incredibly above average
that'd be like 300 wpm or thereabouts

not if he plans on going onto a proper graduate program or doing any sort of academic work
and again, the benefits of learning how to structure and present your work and the impact that has on your professor is priceless

if he's in a grad math program that lets him get away with shit like that then i guess there's no hope

The average person does not speak at 300 WPM.

I understand that he will use it if he goes into a graduate program, but being that he already knows how to use it, why waste the time needlessly retyping your work? If he didn't already know how to type in tex, it would be worth it as an exercise, but that's not the case.

Presentation is big, yes. But there are other areas where that can be addressed, such as retyping your notes, or when doing projects.

I agree with using it in a utilitarian manner when it's the best thing to do, not needlessly wasting time. If his professor is a potential research partner, then it is likely well worth it, but not just for the sake of it.

>retyping
i don't understand why you keep saying this
you type your work in LaTeX from the start. it should take no longer than writing it on paper, especially since mistakes can be cleanly fixed very easily

Ahh I see. That's the difference. I can't help but feel the need to grab pen and paper when I get stuck on a problem, so for me I will begin on latex, then work through it on paper if I get stuck. But I suppose if that part is eliminated, then there's no redundancy taking place.

I've gotten too lazy for that
usually i'll just sketch things out on a board and start typing once i have an idea of how to approach the problem

yeah I'm just too dumb not to do the wrong thing a few times and feel the need to tangentially explore lots of shit before doing it correctly. I'm working on it though, trying to use less and less paper and force myself to have an understanding of the problem before pen touches paper, to think more organized and conceptually overall

i'm jelly when I see mathfags go through a problem set and it looks just like an answer key, while mine is a bunch of chicken scratch

>you can't type faster than you write?
I need to type about 2-3 times faster then I write. And I really can not do that, especially while trying to understand what is said too.

Consider what it takes to write down even one symbol. It is really fast if you simply write a [math]\lambda[/math], but in latex its \lambda 7 symbols.

And if you have something like a limit it is even worse. [math]\underset{n \rightarrow \infty}{lim}[/math] is \underset{n \rightarrow \infty}{lim} 35 or so symbols. Compare that to the 6 symbols I need when I write by hand.