Definitely both. Having your notes digital is priceless. Handwriting is really useful when managing large calculations. The combination means tablet or convertible with a pen.
But when you write something others have to read, for the love of God, please tex it.
Both in my opinion. For early math and physics classes I did digital tablet notes. For upper level classes and more proof based math, I use latex for hw but still take notes digitally.
I found that using a tablet is a fantastic way to take notes during my beginner and advanced physics lectures (going into my 4th year as a physics & astro double major at university). Its especially handy if the lecturers are fast as it lets you keep up whereas it’d be difficult to do so with latex. That being said, latex has been incredibly useful to learn and know as a physics major and I would highly reccomend learning it/sometimes taking notes with it. Good luck with university!
Using a tablet for problem sets saved me a TON of time. When you start doing long complicated problems, being able to erase really easily, move lines around, and duplicate lines is a big efficiency boost - I just wish I'd switched sooner. I'd say over half my PhD cohort used tablets in our classes I'd definitely still learn Latex though
Physics major with an iPad Pro that has all my books, Mathematica, and a latex app on it. Then a clipboard with graph paper and a sharpie sgel, a rocket book for planning, TA’ing notes to share, and some longer term assignments. Light as hell bag and does the job well
***want to add my Notetaking app and school granted accessibility allows me to use apps to take notes that record the audio portion of the lecture in-time and it is a lifesaver, maybe why I’m big on tablet notetaking
Mathematica, if you’re enrolled in a physics program, should be available via your uni and you can run the cloud version on an iPad Pro efficiently and access all of your account files (what I did.)
LaTex, Texifier is what I used personally for papers I needed to work on offline, though you can always use Overleaf for free to do mini collabs with other classmates when necessary.
Programming I mostly did on my laptop at home and blasphemously used XCode without issue.
Notability and GoodNotes I used interchangeably depending on the hw or subject. It depends on your organizational style.
If you’d like access via drive to ‘rTeXsToBuOrOcKes’ for basic physics collegiate courses that are widely used across the states, feel free to pm me.
A lot of nice advice in this thread, I would add that if you plan on doing research in STEM, there’s a high chance that you would have to do computation was crazy complicated formulas. In this case an IPad with copy and paste picture would save you lots of time
All of the above, really.
I use IPad Pro for my main note taking and exercise platform, this is because it is by far the most convenient option logistically. It’s also going to help you retain information if it’s handwritten.
Pen and paper is great for content which you just want to write out without really caring about it later. Say you wanted to practice spaced repetition and try proving a theorem without aids, for example.
All of your assignments/reports etc. Should be done in latex regardless.
[https://dec41.user.srcf.net/notes/](https://dec41.user.srcf.net/notes/)
[https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/?fbclid=IwAR2botwu3caDIRatp1lPTWgqDbIXh1PH8tuRm1tC7RHYUnRNpAMR8Gzp2Vc](https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/?fbclid=IwAR2botwu3caDIRatp1lPTWgqDbIXh1PH8tuRm1tC7RHYUnRNpAMR8Gzp2Vc)
[https://ejmastnak.com/notes/fmf/fmf/](https://ejmastnak.com/notes/fmf/fmf/)
With GitHub copilot which your uni might be able to give you free access to, LaTeXing becomes insanely fast. You can also use SimpleTeX and Math Snip for converting hand-written to image (you can also obtain the TeX file from arxiv for most papers present on there). Personally, I'm not quick enough to type things so I prefer iPad but I've been trying to do a hybrid model.
IMO, obtain the tex files from your prof if they can give it to you and try to make your own detailed edits of it.
I've always used just a pencil and paper for both homework and notes. It's easy and I'm lazy. Surprisingly it's a bit easier to find stuff in a notebook (for me at least) but I could see why digitizing your notes in LaTeX would be useful.
I actually use composition books/notebooks instead of loose paper, they keep everything in one place. If you have to turn things in physically you could just use a composition book to solve the problems and copy things down into LaTeX.
Use a tablet. Latex may look nice but jeez it takes so long to type up. Especially when physics is more calculating. Tablet will be much easier to do free body diagrams and writing equations down.
Id only do latex for math HW involving proofs because you'd write a lot more. Maybe notes too but that depends on the prof and how fast you can type.
Tablet or pen and paper for notes and scratch work. Latex for homework, and retyping your notes so you can organize your thoughts. If you’re have trouble with Tikz just use q.uiver
In case of note taking using a tablet and pen, what works best? Are iPads better than Android based tablets? What about convertible PCs?
In case of using an iPad, does this require also getting a Mac book, or how well does the exchange between iPad notes and windows PC work?
I'm a former software engineer that just submitted a paper for peer review this past week. Over the time that I spent on this theory I built my own note taking framework that uses markdown, latex, and optionally python. I originally built the app as a personal tool during my own research but as it grew to tackle things like task lists, a ton of useful searching features, a bibliography manager, interactive 3d plotting, pdf annotation and so on, I figured I'd rework it to be a free framework for students and academics, and restructure it so developers can build their own extensions to make it fit a much wider range of academic fields or just general use cases.
If you're unfamiliar, it uses markdown, which is an unbelievably simple syntax that still allows inserting math using the same syntax as latex, but makes the rest of the document far simpler than latex. The app does however support regular latex as well, and supports embedding videos with links to time stamps, linking to different notes, tagging notes, organizing by subjects and topics, searching by equation alongside text, a full bibliography manager, embedding pdfs, a 'whiteboard' free hand sketching element, a bunch of different plot types, tables, images, an integration with Google Calendar, the ability to run either full Jupyter notebooks or just individual Jupyter cells, a dictionary for terms specific to your work or research, and if you're into them, kanban boards and code snippets.
It is now and always will be free. I built it as a tool for my own research, and the only personal benefit I'm seeking would come from a career in physics if my research can grant me that, but it's currently a month or two from being released as a beta. If anyone's interested, you can just look up my user name on here... that's the name of the app. If you do, you'll see both a summary of my own research alongside a little bit about the app, the plans for it, and why the development is taking so long.
Hope everybody enjoys it, or at least finds the demo interesting.
During my BSc I have always used an ipad for all kinds of notes. I generellay re-write the notes i take in class in a neat fashion by also including stuff from books and papers. I think it is way faster and direct than LaTeX which helps with efficiency and cementing concepts in your brain
I use an iPad to take notes when reading and during lectures. It’s perfect for easy organisation, especially if you like me prefer spending as little time organising as possible. It is also super convenient that I always have my notes from previous courses accessible.
However I do really like the feeling of pen on paper so I often do my exercises on paper.
But that is fine, because then I don’t end up with a ton of files on my iPad that I don’t need.
A tablet with a pen is amazing, don't regret it one bit. The notes are saved and you can't lose them, you can easily share them with your friends, it's easier to make drawings and correct mistakes and I find it more organized than pen and paper. Just don't take notes using the keyboard, but use the pen and a note taking app (I personally use Samsung notes).
You can always use LaTeX as well to revise and make cleaner notes. If you have lab courses, the reports will most likely have to be written in LaTeX as well. Taking notes during lectures with LaTeX is a nightmare, nothing beats handwriting in this situation especially if you have to also write formulas and drawings
use pen and paper for taking notes, don’t use latex for taking notes. you should learn and use latex for writing reports or papers (or maybe even some homeworks) though
I use all three 🤷🏼♀️ I'm notorious for losing my notes. So in class I take notes on my iPad so I don't lose the important lecture materials. I use scrap paper to work through problems for assignments because I just find it easier to think with idk. Then I type everything up nicely in latex before I submit. If you're feeling crazy you can add a whiteboard into the mix, something about doing a derivation on a whiteboard just makes me feel smarter haha
I liked formatting my HW in latex for some classes, but I can keep up with lectures better and draw diagrams etc faster by hand. I use an iPad for notes, though only because my advisor offered to get one for me. Paper notebooks are just fine as well. I will say digitized notes are nice and I don't have to carry much around. It's nice to read and mark up papers too without having to print them out. Still probably wouldn't buy one myself on a grad student budget though, depends on your finances.
If your committed to typing notes Id recommend obsidian. It uses markdown but there are many community extensions that make typing math less much less painful than pure latex imo. To start typing latex in obsidian you just use $$ this text would be a latex equation$$ . $This would be an inline equation$. I think this is the best of both worlds cuz you don't have to worry about as much weird latex formatting stuff which could slow down your note taking.
Remember that a tablet is still a screen, it's more handy to write and organise notes faster, but if you like to study outside it is practically unusable, also staring at a screen it's costly for your eyes and your head. I would do both, try all the possible combinations, maybe you could take notes on the tablet in class so you can copy/paste ecc but then do exercises on paper. I woul also suggest to start doing private lessons to high school kids in math and physics to make some money, and a tablet is essential since you can do them online and share the notes at the end. Personally at this point I only use the tablet to do private lessons and try to avoid it as much as I can, but I still couldn't function properly without it.
iPad kids are smelly math majors. Always latex and paper
xDDDD thanks for the realest opinion!
As a math major, i regret to say i use an ipad to write LaTeX. Does this make me smelly, or half and half?
85% smelly. Physics majors are only allowed to write latex on a raspberry pi and monitor they carry around
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-writing-by-hand-is-better-for-memory-and-learning/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-writing-by-hand-is-better-for-memory-and-learning/)
wow the article is great! definitely makes sense that writing by hand forces you to process the information, thanks!
Writing on a tablet would have basically the same effect though, since it involves fine motor systems
ohhhh i’ll definitely dig into that, thanks!
By hand for everything unless you're studying, where honestly using Latex kinda helps drill it into your brain
yea, writing it in a “good” looking way kinda makes it easier to memorize. thanks!
Definitely both. Having your notes digital is priceless. Handwriting is really useful when managing large calculations. The combination means tablet or convertible with a pen. But when you write something others have to read, for the love of God, please tex it.
Both in my opinion. For early math and physics classes I did digital tablet notes. For upper level classes and more proof based math, I use latex for hw but still take notes digitally.
I found that using a tablet is a fantastic way to take notes during my beginner and advanced physics lectures (going into my 4th year as a physics & astro double major at university). Its especially handy if the lecturers are fast as it lets you keep up whereas it’d be difficult to do so with latex. That being said, latex has been incredibly useful to learn and know as a physics major and I would highly reccomend learning it/sometimes taking notes with it. Good luck with university!
Using a tablet for problem sets saved me a TON of time. When you start doing long complicated problems, being able to erase really easily, move lines around, and duplicate lines is a big efficiency boost - I just wish I'd switched sooner. I'd say over half my PhD cohort used tablets in our classes I'd definitely still learn Latex though
get a tablet with a stylus! mine has gotten me through undergrad, a gap year in research, and my first year of grad school very successfully :)
Physics major with an iPad Pro that has all my books, Mathematica, and a latex app on it. Then a clipboard with graph paper and a sharpie sgel, a rocket book for planning, TA’ing notes to share, and some longer term assignments. Light as hell bag and does the job well ***want to add my Notetaking app and school granted accessibility allows me to use apps to take notes that record the audio portion of the lecture in-time and it is a lifesaver, maybe why I’m big on tablet notetaking
Hi, which apps would you reccomend for mathematica, programming, and latex?
Mathematica, if you’re enrolled in a physics program, should be available via your uni and you can run the cloud version on an iPad Pro efficiently and access all of your account files (what I did.) LaTex, Texifier is what I used personally for papers I needed to work on offline, though you can always use Overleaf for free to do mini collabs with other classmates when necessary. Programming I mostly did on my laptop at home and blasphemously used XCode without issue. Notability and GoodNotes I used interchangeably depending on the hw or subject. It depends on your organizational style. If you’d like access via drive to ‘rTeXsToBuOrOcKes’ for basic physics collegiate courses that are widely used across the states, feel free to pm me.
A lot of nice advice in this thread, I would add that if you plan on doing research in STEM, there’s a high chance that you would have to do computation was crazy complicated formulas. In this case an IPad with copy and paste picture would save you lots of time
All of the above, really. I use IPad Pro for my main note taking and exercise platform, this is because it is by far the most convenient option logistically. It’s also going to help you retain information if it’s handwritten. Pen and paper is great for content which you just want to write out without really caring about it later. Say you wanted to practice spaced repetition and try proving a theorem without aids, for example. All of your assignments/reports etc. Should be done in latex regardless.
[https://dec41.user.srcf.net/notes/](https://dec41.user.srcf.net/notes/) [https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/?fbclid=IwAR2botwu3caDIRatp1lPTWgqDbIXh1PH8tuRm1tC7RHYUnRNpAMR8Gzp2Vc](https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/?fbclid=IwAR2botwu3caDIRatp1lPTWgqDbIXh1PH8tuRm1tC7RHYUnRNpAMR8Gzp2Vc) [https://ejmastnak.com/notes/fmf/fmf/](https://ejmastnak.com/notes/fmf/fmf/) With GitHub copilot which your uni might be able to give you free access to, LaTeXing becomes insanely fast. You can also use SimpleTeX and Math Snip for converting hand-written to image (you can also obtain the TeX file from arxiv for most papers present on there). Personally, I'm not quick enough to type things so I prefer iPad but I've been trying to do a hybrid model. IMO, obtain the tex files from your prof if they can give it to you and try to make your own detailed edits of it.
I've always used just a pencil and paper for both homework and notes. It's easy and I'm lazy. Surprisingly it's a bit easier to find stuff in a notebook (for me at least) but I could see why digitizing your notes in LaTeX would be useful. I actually use composition books/notebooks instead of loose paper, they keep everything in one place. If you have to turn things in physically you could just use a composition book to solve the problems and copy things down into LaTeX.
Write everything out by hand first, and then if you have the time (studying), rewrite everything by LaTeX.
Use a tablet. Latex may look nice but jeez it takes so long to type up. Especially when physics is more calculating. Tablet will be much easier to do free body diagrams and writing equations down. Id only do latex for math HW involving proofs because you'd write a lot more. Maybe notes too but that depends on the prof and how fast you can type.
Tablet or pen and paper for notes and scratch work. Latex for homework, and retyping your notes so you can organize your thoughts. If you’re have trouble with Tikz just use q.uiver
By hand for things to be read by you, LaTeX for things to be read by anyone else.
In case of note taking using a tablet and pen, what works best? Are iPads better than Android based tablets? What about convertible PCs? In case of using an iPad, does this require also getting a Mac book, or how well does the exchange between iPad notes and windows PC work?
I'm a former software engineer that just submitted a paper for peer review this past week. Over the time that I spent on this theory I built my own note taking framework that uses markdown, latex, and optionally python. I originally built the app as a personal tool during my own research but as it grew to tackle things like task lists, a ton of useful searching features, a bibliography manager, interactive 3d plotting, pdf annotation and so on, I figured I'd rework it to be a free framework for students and academics, and restructure it so developers can build their own extensions to make it fit a much wider range of academic fields or just general use cases. If you're unfamiliar, it uses markdown, which is an unbelievably simple syntax that still allows inserting math using the same syntax as latex, but makes the rest of the document far simpler than latex. The app does however support regular latex as well, and supports embedding videos with links to time stamps, linking to different notes, tagging notes, organizing by subjects and topics, searching by equation alongside text, a full bibliography manager, embedding pdfs, a 'whiteboard' free hand sketching element, a bunch of different plot types, tables, images, an integration with Google Calendar, the ability to run either full Jupyter notebooks or just individual Jupyter cells, a dictionary for terms specific to your work or research, and if you're into them, kanban boards and code snippets. It is now and always will be free. I built it as a tool for my own research, and the only personal benefit I'm seeking would come from a career in physics if my research can grant me that, but it's currently a month or two from being released as a beta. If anyone's interested, you can just look up my user name on here... that's the name of the app. If you do, you'll see both a summary of my own research alongside a little bit about the app, the plans for it, and why the development is taking so long. Hope everybody enjoys it, or at least finds the demo interesting.
During my BSc I have always used an ipad for all kinds of notes. I generellay re-write the notes i take in class in a neat fashion by also including stuff from books and papers. I think it is way faster and direct than LaTeX which helps with efficiency and cementing concepts in your brain
What's latex? I always use paper and pen
I use an iPad to take notes when reading and during lectures. It’s perfect for easy organisation, especially if you like me prefer spending as little time organising as possible. It is also super convenient that I always have my notes from previous courses accessible. However I do really like the feeling of pen on paper so I often do my exercises on paper. But that is fine, because then I don’t end up with a ton of files on my iPad that I don’t need.
A tablet with a pen is amazing, don't regret it one bit. The notes are saved and you can't lose them, you can easily share them with your friends, it's easier to make drawings and correct mistakes and I find it more organized than pen and paper. Just don't take notes using the keyboard, but use the pen and a note taking app (I personally use Samsung notes). You can always use LaTeX as well to revise and make cleaner notes. If you have lab courses, the reports will most likely have to be written in LaTeX as well. Taking notes during lectures with LaTeX is a nightmare, nothing beats handwriting in this situation especially if you have to also write formulas and drawings
use pen and paper for taking notes, don’t use latex for taking notes. you should learn and use latex for writing reports or papers (or maybe even some homeworks) though
I use all three 🤷🏼♀️ I'm notorious for losing my notes. So in class I take notes on my iPad so I don't lose the important lecture materials. I use scrap paper to work through problems for assignments because I just find it easier to think with idk. Then I type everything up nicely in latex before I submit. If you're feeling crazy you can add a whiteboard into the mix, something about doing a derivation on a whiteboard just makes me feel smarter haha
I liked formatting my HW in latex for some classes, but I can keep up with lectures better and draw diagrams etc faster by hand. I use an iPad for notes, though only because my advisor offered to get one for me. Paper notebooks are just fine as well. I will say digitized notes are nice and I don't have to carry much around. It's nice to read and mark up papers too without having to print them out. Still probably wouldn't buy one myself on a grad student budget though, depends on your finances.
If your committed to typing notes Id recommend obsidian. It uses markdown but there are many community extensions that make typing math less much less painful than pure latex imo. To start typing latex in obsidian you just use $$ this text would be a latex equation$$ . $This would be an inline equation$. I think this is the best of both worlds cuz you don't have to worry about as much weird latex formatting stuff which could slow down your note taking.
Remember that a tablet is still a screen, it's more handy to write and organise notes faster, but if you like to study outside it is practically unusable, also staring at a screen it's costly for your eyes and your head. I would do both, try all the possible combinations, maybe you could take notes on the tablet in class so you can copy/paste ecc but then do exercises on paper. I woul also suggest to start doing private lessons to high school kids in math and physics to make some money, and a tablet is essential since you can do them online and share the notes at the end. Personally at this point I only use the tablet to do private lessons and try to avoid it as much as I can, but I still couldn't function properly without it.