Note taking with LaTeX for learning

Summarizing a text book is easy in LaTeX, but sometimes I want to learn the summarized text. Reading the summary over and over again is not very efficient, so I came up with the typical solution, where you can hide the main part of the summary and can check your knowledge by asking yourself questions based on keywords in the margin. Here is an example, where I started summarizing the R package data.table:

image

Now I use hide the main text and can ask myself the questions:

  • Express the data.table in SQL-form?
  • How to create a data.table?

Add the following to … Read the rest “Note taking with LaTeX for learning”

Using file templates in Emacs

A good practice in modeling is to place information related to the project your are working on, the subject, the data and your personal information like E-mail address at the top of your file. In Emacs you can define skeleton functions that will prompt for the information and put it in the file. Below is an example for a file with as comment symbol “**: (the $Id: $ is for my version control system, that automatically will add the information on the last commit in this line).

image

Below you see how to make a function using skeleton. As I don’t … Read the rest “Using file templates in Emacs”

Using Preview for LaTeX documents in Emacs

Editing LaTeX documents with lots of equations can be sometimes hard if you want to refer to the equations in the text. You can use, if you have a big monitor, put the compiled file to the right of your editor, but on a notebook this is not a good option. If you use AucTex in Emacs, you can use the preview mode.

image

Here is the text without preview in Emacs And here it is with preview.

image

You can set the display options in the Option Group “AucTex” under “Preview Appearance”. One more thing: I always compile to pdf (not … Read the rest “Using Preview for LaTeX documents in Emacs”

Automating writing LaTeX papers even further

In an earlier post I wrote on how to use R to produce all kind of figures and tables for a LaTeX paper. This time, I will show, how to automate this process even more.

My work flow consists of a batch file, that runs my model, sends the results to R, produces my tables and figures and sends these to my paper: If I change my model, I just have to run this batch file, and the results in my paper are automatically adjusted. One smaller problem is that I often write in my text on a specific value … Read the rest “Automating writing LaTeX papers even further”

Managing papers with Org-Mode and Reftex

Writing papers means reading lots of papers, and I often lose track of all the papers I am reading: Where did I file a certain paper? Which paper did I start reading? Which paper might be interesting?

A reading list would be nice, but such a list should be easy to handle. I have all my papers catalogued in JabRef and use AucTex and RefTex for writing and Org-Mode for my tasks.The solution should therefore combine the strength of all three. I found a nice post on how to this (http://tincman.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/research-paper-management-with-emacs-org-mode-and-reftex/) and adopted it to my needs.

Here … Read the rest “Managing papers with Org-Mode and Reftex”