So I, as a math and stats prof, admittedly should be more well-versed in LaTeX since like 99% of all math stuff is written using it.

I know the basics, of course, and how to manipulate it to give me pretty much anything I need, but I have never created a document fully from scratch. I’ve basically been going off of templates that others have created and have really only used it to create exams. Never notes or papers or anything like that.

Thus, since we’re revamping MATH 249 for the fall, I decided to use that as an excuse/opportunity to take the relevant note packets that I originally made in Word like six years ago and convert them to PDFs created using LaTeX.

So I spent most of the day today creating little LaTeX templates that I can fill in for each set of notes. The other purpose of these templates was just to give me some practice experimenting with typefaces, different heading styles, in-document hyperlinks, and other things so that I don’t have to pause in my note-making and figure out how to insert a box or a graph or remember the command that makes fractions look bigger/nicer in equations.

And speaking of boxes, I had to look up the code for how to make a boxed section and came across the manual for the “tcolorbox” package that allows you to do so and…

Five hundred and forty-nine pages??

This is exactly the level of pedantry that I would expect from math people, let’s be honest.

Anyway, to show y’all how professional I am, here are screenshots of my template.

I actually love doing this kind of stuff (messing around with code/commands/etc. to figure out what does what and how to make it do what I want it to do), so this was a highly enjoyable endeavor.