Note taking in lectures.

Nuz · 2009-10-04 21:10:28

How do make and organise your notes in classes/lectures ? Any tips, experiences or applications you would like to share?
I've searched for some applications and found NoteCase, which seems to be what I need. Although I worry about drawings, is it possible/needed to do them on a computer?

arkham · 2009-10-04 21:24:31

I use paper.

D-Locked · 2009-10-04 21:26:25

I just use OpenOffice or Abiword and organize notes in folders by date. Later on in the year, I organize them by topic, once I merge all the documents together.
As for drawings, you can use a Wacom Tablet, or if you are lazy (and your teacher allows it), you can take pictures!

dhave · 2009-10-04 21:29:56

One thing to decide is if you want to use a hierarchical approach -- topics, subtopics, etc. -- or a non-hierarchical approach. If you use Tomboy or gnote to keep non-hierarchical notes, you can create hyperlinks between notes and also include links to external files, images, whatever, which may be useful for accommodating drawings or sketches. I imagine it's a matter of personal preference, but I find that non-hierarchical notes are more reflective of what's in my brain.

Tomboy does pretty much all I need, but I've also played around with The Brain, a commercial app which lets you go as far as you want to with non-hierarchical organization of information.

Especially if you're using a non-hierarchical approach, your note-taking app needs to do very rapid searches. Tomboy is pretty good for this, I think.

Last edited by dhave (2009-10-04 21:31:33)

Theomachos · 2009-10-04 21:41:46

Org-mode is also great for note taking....
http://orgmode.org/

eldalion · 2009-10-04 21:44:00

This may sound like a no brainer but I realised writing down today's date proved very valuable for future reference, especially when sharing sharing stuff with fellow students. Before you know it, you end up with tons of material, plus pdf, word processors documents and urls evreywhere, not to mention online leaning environments like moodle or whatever the university is using. Being able to relate to know what was discussed and when and where is great.

Make folders by courses or teachers, split exercise sheets and solutions, and rsync to a backup drive often.

Last edited by eldalion (2009-10-04 21:44:55)

Barrucadu · 2009-10-04 22:00:00

I use type notes in LaTeX form using emacs.

ZankerH · 2009-10-04 22:04:08

Most of my uni courses are math-related, and I've yet to see any piece of software that's more efficient for writing down math (incl. fractions, integrations, roots, sub/super/over/underscript, symbols and greek letters) than pen and paper. Mathematica comes close, but has extortionist pricing, still isn't quite as fast as just using paper, and has a habit of still not understanding some math functions when entered in traditional notation (notable: summation, limited integration), which forces you to write it down in Mathematica code, which takes even more time and takes your mind off the actual math, forcing you to focus on coding.

Sorry for the derail, but does anyone know a piece of software that allows you to input math in traditional notation about as fast as the pen-and-paper approach? LaTeX compatibility would be a definite plus.

(inb4 someone claims to take math notes in LaTeX, on a terminal text editor, in real time)

EDIT: wow, I wasn't even in before that. Enjoy thinking about LaTex instead of focusing on the lecture, I guess.

Last edited by ZankerH (2009-10-04 22:07:32)

Gen2ly · 2009-10-04 22:23:37

<3 zim

Runiq · 2009-10-04 22:29:14

I'd love to have my lecture notes in digital form, but I'm a biochem student and jotting down formulae and chemical compounds with anything else than pen and paper is no fun at all. And a tablet PC is too expensive for most students… So I just stick with the traditional stuff.

Barrucadu · 2009-10-04 22:51:12

ZankerH wrote:

(inb4 someone claims to take math notes in LaTeX, on a terminal text editor, in real time)
EDIT: wow, I wasn't even in before that. Enjoy thinking about LaTex instead of focusing on the lecture, I guess.

I never claimed to do that
Maths = paper, and typed up later. Everything else = emacs.

iphitus · 2009-10-05 09:08:43

Paper. For engineering there's often too much in the way of diagrams and maths to take down. Being able to instantly draw links, annotate anywhere, correct, is just far easier than a kb/mouse. I'd like a tablet though, but the price is too much.

I wonder how successful a cheap tablet would be. I think an eeepc+tablet would be awesome.

Last edited by iphitus (2009-10-05 09:10:10)

drtoki · 2009-10-05 09:28:46

ZankerH wrote:

Most of my uni courses are math-related, and I've yet to see any piece of software that's more efficient for writing down math (incl. fractions, integrations, roots, sub/super/over/underscript, symbols and greek letters) than pen and paper. Mathematica comes close, but has extortionist pricing, still isn't quite as fast as just using paper, and has a habit of still not understanding some math functions when entered in traditional notation (notable: summation, limited integration), which forces you to write it down in Mathematica code, which takes even more time and takes your mind off the actual math, forcing you to focus on coding.
Sorry for the derail, but does anyone know a piece of software that allows you to input math in traditional notation about as fast as the pen-and-paper approach? LaTeX compatibility would be a definite plus.
(inb4 someone claims to take math notes in LaTeX, on a terminal text editor, in real time)

I'm a math/physics graduate student and take most of my notes in SAGE. If I don't have a laptop with me I write directly in the textbook. If I don't have either, I just don't take notes. I've learned through the years that I never revisit anything I write down on paper so I don't even bother anymore.

thetrivialstuff · 2009-10-05 10:06:11

I've tried many, many ways to take notes in class, mostly focussed around being as digital as possible. Invariably I spent more time on my notetaking system than the class itself, which resulted in my marks being strongly correlated with how much the class interested me -- I failed some of the more boring ones; for the more interesting classes it just seeped in naturally whether I took notes or not.

Here's some stuff I've tried, so you don't have to

Recording full audio for lectures: sort of good for reviewing in that it's easy to play them back (and you can do it at high speed, and two lectures at once if you're really desparate -- you can understand quite a bit, actually...). Effective review strategy though... not really. Listening at 1x speed works as a cure for insomnia though.

Recording video and audio: forbidden in most universities. Had a couple profs give me verbal warnings while trying this; difficult to get away with. Awesome for reviewing later though, and depending on the course you might be able to find some free videos from another university (MIT open course ware has great ones on linear algebra for instance).

Pen and paper / hybrid methods:

Shorthand: Relatively easy to get up to realtime speed in Handywrite (the dialect I learned). Scan the notes afterwards if you want them digital. A *lot* less wrist strain than writing longhand English (and much faster), and you get random access to Greek letters & weird math symbols. Downside? I never got around to learning to read it. It might've worked out great if I had the time to reread my notes and/or actually studied, but as it was I ended up with a stack of pages that took an hour each to decipher at the end of the term. Did not do well on exams that term; didn't bother keeping up shorthand over the summer & forgot most of it.

Paper notes, then scanning: Probably the best all-around solution for math and other symbol-heavy courses. Date & course-coding your paper is important! Otherwise you'll spend ages on scanning day figuring out what goes with what.

OpenOffice math (or LaTeX) for typeable symbols & text, drawing diagrams on scrap paper & cross-referencing: fast enough to keep up in class, and you can go back to pen & paper whenever you need something really arbitrary. Most of your notes will be already typeset when you get home, but really, merging the paper in afterwards is a pain and takes too much time. Not worth it.

Vector drawing programs: Too slow; can't keep up in most classes.

Typing everything in plaintext: Sort of works, especially for classes that aren't symbol/diagram-heavy, but occasionally you have to resort to describing a picture in a thousand words and it's a pain, because you know you won't be able to draw it quickly enough any other way... Grep-able though, which is nice.

Theoretical stuff I really wish existed:

Using a touchpad as a poor man's tablet. To make this work, you'd need a battery-powered stylus, because touchpads are heat-sensitive and not pressure-sensitive. I haven't bothered to put together such a device yet because until last week I didn't have a laptop with a touchpad, but I'll let you know (realistically I won't get around to this anytime soon).

For tablets, and might work on normal systems too: Define new shapes on the fly and bind them to key shortcuts right away. E.g. you're typing along when suddenly you need a greek letter -- instead of memorizing a whole bunch of compose key combinations or unicode numbers, just draw the symbol you need and hit ctrl+something. From then on for that session, you can get another copy of your symbol to appear at the cursor by hitting ctrl+something. This way you're not stuck in handwriting mode or having to reach for the stylus *every* time... This wouldn't just be limited to typographical symbols; you could draw up a blank Karnaugh map or something and bind that to a keyboard shortcut.

I've submitted the latter as a suggestion to the author of Xournal (a notetaking thingie that's in pacman), and he likes the idea and has added it to his todo list. Hopefully it turns out to work as awesomely as I think it will

Finally, I wish notetaking weren't even necessary. Now that video technology is ubiquitous, why the hell are we still teaching classes as if it's the 1950's? All textbooks should be wikis, written and maintained by classes as they go (granted, the first one's gonna be a bitch to write, but after that the updates can be homework for marks, and nothing makes you learn stuff better than having to lay it out for others).

Lectures (the non-interactive talking-head kind that most profs do) are a waste of human labour, and should mostly be put on video and assigned as homework to watch. If there's one thing our culture has gotten really good at, it's watching episodes of shows -- a lot less of a motivation problem than homework.

What do you do in the lecture time slot, when everyone comes to class? Homework, of course. Have a big group study session, with the prof hovering around the room answering questions the students can't figure out on their own. Solves the motivation problem, because when you're in a room full of other people doing homework, what the hell else are you gonna do? Makes the prof do something that actually *does* require human intelligence. And when someone notices something unclear in the textbook, everybody's there to collaberate on the wiki update...

BTW, I'm not totally dreaming -- a high school in the states somewhere tried the reversing homework/lectures thing and it worked great.

Last edited by thetrivialstuff (2009-10-05 10:07:55)

thetrivialstuff · 2009-10-05 10:09:53

drtoki wrote:

I've learned through the years that I never revisit anything I write down on paper so I don't even bother anymore.

Yes, this. If you're the sort who never reviews, then your time in class is best spent just listening with your full brain. If you can "get it" then, you won't need to review anyway, so you'll save yourself a lot of time and effort overall.

Nuz · 2009-10-05 14:17:11

Thanks for your input. I'll check out SAGE and Zim. It seems that it is quite hard to replace the good old paper and pen method, especially if you're learning math/math related subjects.

Pank · 2009-10-05 14:52:41

If the notes are mostly text I use org-mode.
For math and statistics I use LaTeX.
Naturally, I use Emacs.
I rarely use paper.
--Rasmus

madalu · 2009-10-05 16:20:03

+1 org-mode

Best. PIM. Ever.

You can embed LaTeX fragments and preview them on the fly in your org-mode file.

Basically you can do anything with org-mode. As much as I love vim, nothing in vim-land even comes close.

scio · 2009-10-05 16:22:39

Paper for all my engineering classes, if I'm going to take notes. As said before, if you are going to take notes in a heavily symbolic / diagram class paper is the fastest. Trying to make a graph with annotations and diagrams with notes, paper or maybe a tablet if you are really good with it.

If you are one of those people who actually reference notes afterward, then you could put it all into LaTeX for archiving.

x0rg · 2009-10-05 16:33:11

You're all talking about using emacs to take notes, and for LaTex, is it possible to do the same in vim?
I'm also wondering if it's possible to do something like that

EDIT: Typos fixed

Last edited by x0rg (2009-10-05 16:36:52)

Saint0fCloud · 2009-10-05 17:14:50

x0rg wrote:

You're all talking about using emacs to take notes, and for LaTex, is it possible to do the same in vim?

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=25134

x0rg · 2009-10-05 17:18:18

oh yeah, I even have this installed, I just haven't used it yet....has someone already used this for taking math notes?

whordijk · 2009-10-05 19:03:12

University Physics here: I have yet to encounter a worthy opponent to paper

Ankka · 2009-10-05 19:35:09

Paper FTW!

Of course programming classes are a beast of their own kind.

fuse · 2009-10-05 19:54:06

Google Notebook

Arch Linux

#1 2009-10-04 21:10:28

Note taking in lectures.

#2 2009-10-04 21:24:31

Re: Note taking in lectures.

#3 2009-10-04 21:26:25

Re: Note taking in lectures.

#4 2009-10-04 21:29:56

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#5 2009-10-04 21:41:46

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#6 2009-10-04 21:44:00

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