SB Mathematical Writing Seminar, Fall 2014

This seminar focuses on all issues of professional development relevant to young mathematicians, particularly graduate students. Among the topics we may discuss: preparing application materials, using TeX and TeX packages, mathematical writing, creating webpages, creating blogs, time management, preparing / giving research lectures, and general discussions about doing research.

Meetings

The seminar will meet on Mondays, 5:00pm-6:00pm in Math Tower 5-127. Here is a tentative list of lectures (but we can easily change this to suit the tastes of the seminar participants).

Mathematical Writing Resources

• Mathematical Writing by Donald Knuth. Available in print from the following webpage.
• How to Write Mathematics by N. E. Steenrod, P. R. Halmos, M. M. Schiffer, and J. A. Dieudonné. The essay by Halmos is particularly fun and is also available here from L'Enseignement Mathématique.
• Steven G. Krantz, A primer of mathematical writing: being a disquistion on having your ideas recorded, typeset, published, read and appreciated, American Mathematical Society, 1997.
• Advice from Jonathan Shewchuk, UC Berkeley CS department: Three Sins of Authors and Giving an Academic Talk.
• Courtesy of William Stein's webpage, Serre's fabulous video How to Write Mathematics Badly.

Resources in Professional Ethics in the Mathematical Sciences.

• Ethical Guidelines of the AMS.
• Code of Practice of the EMS.
• SIAM Article: Authorial Integrity in Scientific Publication.
• SIAM Article. Professional Ethics: Taking the High Road by Dianne P. O'Leary.

Job Application Resources

• MathJobs
• AMS Cover Sheet
• AMS Job Search Advice for New PhDs
• Jason Starr's CV (pdf, source, class option file). You need the class option file in order to compile the source.
• One of Jason Starr's old research statements (pdf, source, biblio database file).
• One of Jason Starr's old teaching statements (pdf, source).

LaTeX Resources USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! I am not a computer guru. I have been able to install most of these programs and use them on my computer. But that is no guarantee that it will work for you. If you experience problems with some of the software below, I urge you to read the documentation.

• If you intend to use a port of UNIX or Linux software under Windows, I strongly encourage you to first install Cygwin. With Cygwin installed, you will be able to open a Linux terminal emulator. For some of the software below, part of the installation may involve running a file from within this emulator.
• A GNU directory with precompiled Emacs distributions for Windows (if you use a standard Linux distribution, Emacs should be bundled with your distribution). If you want to use AUCTeX (described below) for TeX compiling in Emacs, you should get Emacs 23.3. Please also read the Emacs for Windows FAQ.
• A list of free TeX implementations for MacOS and Windows from the TeX Users Group. Personally I use MiKTeX.
• In order to compile TeX from within Emacs (rather than having to open a cygwin window, etc.), I use AUCTeX. Note: this is not a distribution of TeX. You will still need to install MiKTeX or some other distribution of TeX.
• To produce and view PostScript (.PS) files with TeX, I use Ghostscript. To produce PostScript, you will need to get Ghostscript (the precompiled file for Windows is near the bottom of the page). To view PostScript files, you will need to get GSview.
• For spell-checking, I also recommend downloading Ispell. There is now a GNU version called Aspell.

Some useful LaTeX Packages Under construction.

• The Hyperref package.
• The AMSmath package. Here is the source and PDF for a write-up of the Snake Lemma using the commutative diagram features of AMSmath.
• The XYpic package. Here is the source and PDF for a write-up of the Snake Lemma using XYpic.
• The TikZ package.
• The Beamer class of LaTeX documents. Here is the user's guide. Here is a nice tutorial on Beamer by Amber Smith, as well as the source code. I used Amber Smith's tutorial to make my own (first) Beamer presentation (on the Snake Lemma, to keep with the theme). Here is source code for my presentation.
• Link 1.
• Link 2.
• Link 3.
• Link 4.
• PGF and TikZ program page.

Back to my home page.