Pre: LaTeX Refresher + Writing Mathematics

Notes

Briefly discuss LaTeX and point students towards https://vknight.org/tex/

Describe plagiarism

Ask students to spend 3 minutes discussing what plagiarism is. This should be a reminder/revision of what was discussed during Library session.

Writing mathematics

Ask students to spend 5 minutes reading ../../../../assets/pdf/writing-mathematics-guidelines/main.pdf.

Spend 5 minutes in groups discussing principles of mathematical writing.

Spend 10 minutes capturing this on the board.

Some principles might include:

• Know your audience;
• Nudge your reader “with gentle commands”;
• Writing well does not necessarily mean writing more;
• Give a roadmap for long arguments (help your reader);
• Use sentences;
• Use words;
• Use paragraphs;
• Use examples;
• Simplify and refine: until you submit it, it is a draft;
• Don’t follow the guidelines when it’s appropriate not to.

Highlight that next week we will be peer reviewing other work:

• First class meeting: review the three example pieces of work
• Last class meeting: peer review draft of each others work

The three examples we will consider can be found here, note that they are not perfect and we will critically discuss them:

• sir.pdf
• page-rank.pdf
• monty-hall.pdf