
Ask HN: How do you write math notes? - terofle
I‘m asking those of you, who make notes on the math textbooks you read.<p>Are you noting down every definition, theorem etc. or do you have another style for comprehending math knowledge?<p>Do you combine your note technique with your reading method?<p>I‘m searching for new ideas for learning math.
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tombert
When reading for any other reason than pure entertainment, I like to take
notes by hand in a graph paper notebook.

I typically make an outline; when I'm reading a math book I tend to have a
rule of "summarize this paragraph in a maximum number of bullets" (the number
of bullets is a bit variable depending on the size of the paragraph). For me,
I feel like the summarization is a good way to "digest" the knowledge...if I
can summarize it concisely I tend to have an ok-ish understanding of it.

After that, I like to type up the notes with Vim in markdown and convert it
with Pandoc. This is useful to me just as a way to a) get some repetition and
b) notice mistakes.

In Pandoc, you can of course use LaTeX equations, which are relatively easy to
type out once you get used to them. Once you're done with the notes it's
pretty easy to get pandoc to render a pdf.

Here's an example of some notes I wrote a discrete math class last year:
[https://gitlab.com/tombert/college-
notes/blob/master/discret...](https://gitlab.com/tombert/college-
notes/blob/master/discrete_mathematics.pdf)

I don't know if this is the best way to learn math but it is usually ok for
me.

EDIT: When drawing charts/graphs, I tend to do them by hand and scan it in
later (using an app on my phone called "CamScanner"), or use something like
draw.io and render them as a png. I tried using tikZ but I felt like I was
spending more time mucking with configs than actually working, and I figured
that I'm not writing a textbook.

