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Comment by jimhefferon | Hacker News Reader

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).

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I'll second this. I am very familiar with latex. I have even done similar things to my neovim configuration (I use ultisnips) and have a few custom latex 'sty'les to include various commands to do stuff I do frequently but is a pain otherwise.

This however is and was for end-product stuff: my own personal collection of condensed notes, assignments that needed to be typed, and so on (I also use ultisnips for coding). I studied mathematics as a undergrad (I have a first class degree in Mathematics from a UK university) and I hand-wrote my lectures, and I know many mathematicians that are frankly much better than I am who find computers frankly difficult and avoided LaTeX as long as they possibly could.

What matters (if you are studying mathematics) is doing mathematics (exercises, experimentation, understanding proofs etc). There is no substitute. This is a nice to have, but will not make you a better mathematician. If you want to know how to be a good student, IMO this is a nice guide: https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/system/files/attachments/study_pu...

Interesting - once I got into a rythym I didn't find tex-ing live lectures actually that time consuming. I think it really depends on the field of math though, maybe?

I also use a markdown + inline latex setup rather than tex from scratch.

I found it was relatively easy to type and tex everything that was written on the board. But I think my comprehension probably suffered a bit, though maybe that would have happened from using a pen and paper too.

Agreed - I ultimately just stopped taking notes.

I typed notes throughout my undergrad, and it worked poorly. Everything in math is slow to type and fast to handwrite: subscripts, exponents, arrows, matrices, Greek letters, labels, diagrams, integrals, fractions. My shorthand omitted all latex conventions (A_0 became A0, arrows became ->), but it wasn't enough.

For non-math classes, typing notes worked well.

It's useful to know that \to and \gets are shorthands for \rightarrow and \leftarrow.

I found the ability to copy and paste and then modify while taking notes more than made up for the difference in note-taking speed.

It depends on the subject matter for me. Live-LaTeXing works pretty well for me until matrices get involved. Just fractions, equations, and summations are fairly easy though.

Your nick rings some bells. [linear algebra etc].

Indeed, I think the same and am on the very same boat.

Can you explain a bit about your personal note taking/retention process?

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.

Forgive me, there is nothing to explain. I bring paper and pencil. Boring.

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.

The person you're addressing like they're 16 and asking for your guidance is a literal expert in their field(s). (See https://hefferon.net/ )

Welcome to HN! Where the guy that I'm giving hobby car advice to is something of an idol in my professional field.

Newton may have stood on the shoulders of giants, but HN enables us to casually rub elbows with them.

Thank you for the kind words, but I nodded when I read the parent post. It reminded me of something my wife and I talk about, how we took a lot of video when our kids were young, and maybe we should have just enjoyed more of the time.

Apologies, I intended to comment on the same one you replied to, not to your comment. I remember struggling so hard in school to take notes, and then not understanding them.

I hadn't heard of you, but really respect what you're doing. I hope I didn't cause offence.

> offence

Heavens, no. Enjoy the day.

Really?

I replied to the wrong comment, I meant to reply to the person above. The one that asked for guidance, like they were a college student struggling...

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