1) Mathematicians write all over the papers and books they read. Electronic versions of this exist (e.g., Xournal, written by a well known mathematician), but they tend not to be as convenient as simply scribbling on paper.
2) Mathematicians digest papers nonlinearly. Digital presentations don't usually lend themselves to flipping back and forth between pages. At times, I suspect mathematicians use papers and books as memory mansions, organizing concepts by relating them to their location in the physical copy.
That's a fairly weak argument: you can browse an electronic document in a non-linear fashion way easier than a book.
And also: books don't have CTRL-F
How do I make handwritten side notes? How can I create a bookmark for a specific page? How can I view multiple non-contiguous pages next to each other? How can I reference a specific part in an electronic text (in non-electronic text "3rd paragraph on page 11") and send it to a collaborator?
However, to nevertheless address your points:
>How do I make handwritten side notes
There is a number of applications to do this (e.g. xournal), and when combined with a touchscreen on a decent hirez modern device, we're getting close to what paper can do. I'll grant you: this is still the weak point of computers as compared to pen and paper (especially for scribbling diagrams), but it won't be for long.
>How can I create a bookmark for a specific page
I'm not sure if you're trolling here, all e-book readers I've used have this feature.
>How can I view multiple non-contiguous pages next to each other?
Multiple windows ? CTRL+N ?
>How can I reference a specific part in an electronic text (in non-electronic text "3rd paragraph on page 11") and send it to a collaborator?
Cut and paste?
Or ... sending him an email with ""3rd paragraph on page 11"" in the body?
If you present a 100 page book as a folder of 100 image files instead, most of these become image manipulation problems:
>How do I make handwritten side notes?
The same way you'd edit an image.
> How can I create a bookmark for a specific page?
Create a subdirectory with the page or a link to the page.
> How can I reference a specific part in an electronic text (in non-electronic text "3rd paragraph on page 11")
Cut and paste the excerpt into a new image file.
> and send it to a collaborator?
File sharing is a solved problem. Hell, you can even share it on Instagram if you so choose.
They're mathematicians, not display interface experts. This is like demanding that someone explain to you why they don't like a particular kind of food -- people are allowed to dislike things without having a complete internal axiomatic system justifying it.
1) computer displays require you to scroll, which interrupts your mental flow
2) paper and pencil or pen is free-form
3) in advanced mathematics, results are rarely calculated in numerical form, so the computer isn't helpful
4) notebooks are permanent. No backups needed.
I imagine the same is true for most cartoon artists.
And what Grad student can afford those at [Insert State University]. I was a PhD student in math not long ago, and vastly preferred paper books, and even printed out articles. It is way way easier on your eyes than something actively blasting light. Maybe in 20 years high quality e-ink will be cheap enough, but that has been promised since forever.
See, this is the kind of bad argument that really irks me. There are good arguments about how computers aren't ready to replace pen and paper for actively doing math, and even a few shortcomings for computers replacing paper textbooks. But "actively blasting light" doesn't mean anything. Photons are photons. If you think a backlit display is somehow harder on your eyes than an indirectly-lit piece of paper, then you should be trying to figure out whether you simply have the backlight set too bright for your surroundings, or if your screen's contrast ratio at reasonable brightness levels is inadequate. Your LCD's default settings are probably optimized for movie-watching more than reading, but that's easily fixed and definitely not an inherent limitation of all backlit displays everywhere.
This may be true, but in my experience(not very wealthy, typically sub $400 devices) the presets are set such that 0% backlight in the OS is glaringly bright. I cannot turn it down without rooting the device.
Color temperature can also be a problem, but there's a lot of awareness of that issue nowadays. Most operating systems now support automatic adjustment of color temperature based on time of day, plus manual adjustment. Devices that adjust their color temperature to account for ambient lighting are starting to catch on, and I expect they'll be pretty common in a few years.
love of math and love of technology aren't as closely linked as you believe.
Maybe you don't see the problem because you aren't doing any math?
But also..all my favourite books have markings on each page, margin comments, turned-over corners etc. Any pdf book I read more than once or twice, I'll get a paper copy, I think.
Text editor customizations to trigger `make <current-doc>.pdf` on save. (Emacs in my case)
A PDF viewer that reloads the PDF when it changes on disk (Skim in my case, which does auto-reload, but I also have some Applescript in the Makefile to poke Skim so that it notices the file change faster).
A good text editor LaTeX editing mode (Emacs in my case).
Random test editor customizations for working on LaTeX.
My main tips are
1. don't be shy of perfecting your work environment
2. use git to track both your work environment customizations and your LaTeX work.