The article “Maximum Overhang” by Mike Paterson, Yuval Peres, Mikkel Thorup, Peter Winkler, and Uri Zwick won the 2011 David P. Robbins Prize, an MAA Writing Award. This pdf of the article is annotated to point out to students how to write a mathematics paper. The annotations address the structure and content of an introduction, how to integrate equations, text, and figures, how to guide the audience through the content, how to cite, etc. The article addresses the question of how far a stack of blocks can extend from the edge of a table. It was published in the American
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The most advanced in a sequence of LaTeX exercises, this homework asks students to use LaTeX to create presentation slides that include an image with LaTeX labels. From MIT’s communication-intensive offering of Real Analysis.
Read more →Part of a series of incremental assignments designed to help students learn LaTeX, this assignment by Craig Desjardins asks students to make a figure of their choice and include it in a LaTeX document. The assignment is loosely specified, so this assignment will work best in a class of self-motivated learners.
Read more →Visuals can be a powerful tool for helping the audience to understand a concept, but can also unintentionally mislead. The following resources are about using visuals in mathematics. Most were found by M.I.T.’s undergraduate researcher Noor Doukmak. Some of these websites require javascript or java. If you have trouble viewing images, check that your browser has javascript enabled and check whether it supports java. Examples of effective mathematical visuals Visual Insight: Mathematics made visible This AMS blog is “…a place to share striking images that help explain advanced topics in mathematics.” MIT Mathlets “Here you will find a suite of dynamic [javascript]
Read more →A wide variety of drawing programs are available for easily making figures, and it’s easy to create text using LaTeX; but combining the two can be unreasonably difficult. What programs are best for including LaTeXed labels in figures? There are many options, but none yet seem to be ideal for undergraduates. If you have new information or relevant experience with any of these, please feel free to contribute to this page. The following options have been suggested. For those that have been tried in the classroom, instructor comments have been included. Make LaTeX label separately and import into generic illustration program LaTeX
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