News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Get Better Advice by Taking Notes by euroclydon on Sunday May 31, 2009 @06:26PM (#635135)
When I studied math, I tried transcribing my notes into LaTex, but found that, while enjoyable, it was too slow, and I got behind. Maybe a tablet PC with some type of note-taking software would work, but that's pretty annoying. I like to use PC's for things that humans can't do themselves, like crunching numbers while I sleep.

I got fast enough at hand notes, and found that if I kept my book open during the lecture, that I could skip note taking on a portion of the lecture if it was covered adequately in the book.

Re:Get Better Advice by Taking Notes by jacobolus on Sunday May 31, 2009 @08:13PM (#635219)
> it was too slow, and I got behind.

This is purely a function of practice. 5 years ago, a friend of mine could TeX math notes substantially faster than I could write them by hand, including reasonably complex commutative diagrams, lots of tricky formulae, etc. A big part of TeX speed is setting up a bunch of personal macros for commonly used symbols (e.g. \a instead of \alpha, etc.).

Re:Get Better Advice by Taking Notes by edd on Sunday May 31, 2009 @06:48PM (#635149)
One thing that I have seen others do is to create a kind of footnote system in their laptop document so that any formula or diagram gets a reference number then they quickly grab the pen and paper and jot the formula/diagram down then straight back to the computer. Then after the lecture just digitalise the footnotes. Really depends on how much of the lecture is formulas/diagrams to text I suppose.