tl;dr: Subscribe to The Math Repository on YouTube, download Notion, and follow his Just Enough LaTeX to Survive Playlist using Notion’s formula editor.

Before I started my Data Science Course I already knew that there would be a lot of Mathematics involved. But I didn’t consider how I would do this math entirely on a computer let alone in an exam with a 1 hour 30 minute set time limit (All exams in IU are 1 hour and 30 minutes long. At least per my experience). The Maths itself is not inherently difficult but being able to properly transfer the matrices you drew on a page to the text box is pretty tough. But That’s where LaTeX comes in.

LaTeX was probably made in the 80s or something but that does not matter. What matters is that it stops you from writing formulas like this:

But like this:

Huh? Not convinced? How about this:

Doesn’t that look nice? Now you might be thinking, “How did you do that?” That is the power of LaTeX! It makes sure that your formulas are formatted correctly. (It would really suck to get a question wrong not because of an incorrect answer but bad formatting.) LaTeX is great and all but there is one drawback. LaTeX can be slow. It can take a while to format your equation correctly but that might be worth it if it means your equation is readable at the end.

I could now try and probably fail to explain and teach LaTeX to you but I will save both of us the trouble. There is a YouTube Channel aptly named The Math Repository that has a fantastic playlist called Just Enough LaTeX to Survive that teaches you, As per my experience, Just enough LateX to survive the Math Courses here at IU!

One piece of advice I do want to give you is to download Notion (And no, this is not sponsored). Not only is it an amazing tool for University and Life in general but it has an exquisite formula editor that supports LaTeX. (“exquisite??“ Man, they should be sponsoring with all this shilling I’m doing.)

This is short but very important. There are definitely students who have passed math courses without LaTeX (I’m one of them!) but I believe that LaTeX is a great skill to add to your tool belt. Thank you for reading. Click Here to find out the best AI tool I recommend for University papers. ;) <3