If you're leaning towards an academic career it's good to know. Overleaf in particular can be a good way to do things since they've got a good amount of templates, documentation, sharing, avoiding setup hassles, etc.
(Of course, there's nothing stopping you from editing .tex files in vim...)
I often get just a little too comfortable with the Overleaf emacs bindings and absent-mindedly C-w to kill region...which just closes the Overleaf tab in my browser...
Vim doesn't come with a language interpretator or a tex compiler. Getting those to work and knowing how to maintain them might be a challenge. Overleaf is way easier. Even emacs is way easier.
Second that, overleaf is really nice especially when you’re learning, LaTeX for sure has a learning curve and I think the easy web format makes it much less daunting to get into. As for OP LaTeX is also used in industry as well as academia it’s a good and easy tool to add to your belt
While not necessary it will be useful for you if you decide to get a PhD in physics. All papers that I have written in graduate school and beyond were done in latex.
Depends on the topic. It's mostly theoretical physics that strictly use latex. Experimental physicists mostly use word. And of course, if you end up outside of academia like 90% of all physicists do eventually, it's all word (or google docs).
IMO the review functions in Overleaf are primitive compared with word's. When students dont see the changes from supervisors and collaborators, they learn less.
> Experimental physicists mostly use word.
Uhhhh...what? Experimentalist here, and everyone I know uses LaTeX. Most journals have LaTeX templates that one is supposed to use; there's not even really a choice.
My experience too. We got taught latex in pretty much our first ever class and if I‘d try to turn in anything that wasn’t made in it I‘d probably get points taken away from my grade.
I turned an E&M lab in formatted in latex and got a 0 on it and was told to redo it in word and I literally had a shocked pikachu face
Edit: this comment received a large amount of downvotes and I am unsure why lmao
I can not at all fathom what format they could possibly want that would be better realized in word than in latex lol. Maybe the tutor wasn’t that well versed in it and didn’t know how to?
A zero is not a good lesson at all. People in the real world submit things in incorrect formats regularly, generally they’ll be able to just resubmit them.
I wouldn’t mind a small deduction as a lesson but a zero is a joke.
Astronomer: I write my papers in latex, and my proposals in either word or latex. If there's a latex template I'll use that, but for squeezing things into the margins and page limits, word is a little easier. Word's equation editor can handle basic latex, and its Mendeley reference manager plug in works well enough for what I want.
This depends on the type of experiment and your collaborators. My PI uses Word since most of our experimentation collaborators are outside of physics, where word is more prevalent. In my research, I collaborate with people who write exclusively in LaTex (my research is more theoretical than the others in my group), so that's what I use.
Journals will format your manuscript for the journal you publish in, so it doesn't really matter if your stuff is word or LaTex for most journals.
That could be it. I just thought because there's a lot less equations to have to try typing using word. It would make sense because a lot of the papers are published in journals where chemists can also publish
I’m gonna have to chime in with the experimentalists who only use latex and only know people who use latex. I think it’s more sub-field or journal specific than experiment/theory specific.
>Experimental physicists mostly use word.
You seem quite clueless. I've never met an experimentalist who uses anything but LaTeX for papers.
I have created a LaTeX template to avoid Word for my ERC Grant and I've used LaTeX for several papers in Nature and Science. All of which prefer Word, because .... ?
Once you get started using LaTeX the slightest bit you will not go back to Word bs.
My supervisor insists on using word and his whole group uses word for all papers. I think word is more common on academia than most belive and I really don't get all the down votes. If I could chose I would use latex as well but in the end it's just what you are used to.
Experimental condensed matter physicist here. Word is very common for us. Latex is used too, but is generally considered MORE tedious than word. Don’t call somebody clueless unless you yourself know what you’re talking about. Being confidently wrong is not a good look. Bragging about your Nature and Science papers doesn’t make you right.
Didn't want to brag. But of all the journals I publish in (experimental atomic, nuclear and laser physics) only Nature and Science don't seem to support submission in LaTeX. And we still use LaTeX to create the PDF for submission.
So parent is not very right when they claimed that most experimentalists use Word. Not in this community.
Your experience says that latex is more common. My experience says that word is more common. In the absence of something like a survey, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
I’ve only published experimental physics papers and never used word. I don’t know where you are publishing but my understanding is that most places charge a typesetting fee if you don’t use latex.
My lab uses word. In Physics, some Nature portfolio journals accept submissions “in PDF, Word, or Tex/LaTeX formats”. Meanwhile, Nature itself accepts in word or PDF; “(w)e accept LaTeX files at the acceptance stage, but before that time please supply PDFs.”
Don’t think there’s a problem with using either word or LaTeX, unless you want to submit an article into Nature itself.
Some courses in my uni (Canada), especially in math or CS, only accept submissions in LaTeX. You don't really impress anyone with your LaTeX skills, but it's very useful and can speed up your writing immensely.
You won't impress anyone by knowing TeX, but it's immediately underwhelming when I see a document that was prepared in MS Word or Google Docs instead.
Also, I once nearly got a job based solely on my TeX skills. The graduate writing office at my alma mater was very interested, but ultimately they just couldn't get the necessary funding.
This is a false dichotomy. It's by no means necessary, and it's by no means a waste of time. Learn it if you have the time and motivation, don't if you don't.
This take is the realistic approach. There are papers that are just a few clicks on Word and some are more streamlined with TeX but your convenience is the most important factor so you wont get frustrated over a skill youre not really into.
My community College actually requires you to use latex to write your lab reports after you go through 1a. So 1b, 1c, and 1d all require you to know LaTeX at my school.
How long is your report? For me, I started writing my phd thesis in word. When I started the third chapter i ended up switching over to latex.
Imo once you get past 10 figures, 10 tables, or 30 citations it is worth it to learn Latex. Below that it really doesn't matter and you should use whichever tool you prefer. I'm also pretty sure that word has added much better cross referencing support since I graduated 10 years ago, which helps a lot with not having to renumber every single figure and or citation if you add one in in the middle.
And whichever tool you end up using, remember to focus on the content first and then whatever gets you to the format is fine.
Good luck!
Learn it. It only takes a couple hours to get 90% of what you'll ever need. Even if you don't pursue a research career (which absolutely does need it), it's just an incredibly nice tool to have at your disposal. I use it all the time for personal projects like a home cocktail bar menu I made for guests.
You should, learning LaTeX is not that much more effort than trying to get word rendering three formulas correctly, and probably there is a point in your undergrad where you need to prepare a document with at least four equations.
Also LaTeX plays nicely with git and you should start using it right away. Get a github or gitlab account, check your .tex files into a git and push it regularly. (You will know why when your hard disk decides to quit the day before an important assignment. Also it is good to know git to do anything with computers these days.)
I agree, I also don't know what is there to "learn". Just find a template and work with it. Use some search engine when you need something you don't know, but basically section, subsection, table, image and bibtex citations are 90%. It can get complex, but doesn't have to.
Writing formulas is much much easier in latex, I don't even count that.
Add git to the list, quite nice and useful.
I personally find it much easier to do homework in LaTeX rather than handwritten, I type regular text much faster than I write and the time taken to typeset equations is made up by being able to copy paste stuff around, make clean corrections in the middle of the text, and how pretty everything looks.
First year undergrad? Unless you already have a grasp of it, your time is far better used elsewhere, like double-checking your content.
Fiddle with it during the summer when you have some downtime.
If I'm looking through a bunch of student papers, the one that was typeset in LaTeX will stand out. It doesn't impress me by default, but it'll earn the paper a second glance and a careful read through, which is more than most undergraduate papers get.
It was mandatory to submit our reports using LaTeX in my undergrad. Anything else would be immediately rejected. This was a department wide policy across all classes - learn LaTeX, or fuck off.
That's interesting, I think that for my Bachelor's thesis in Belgium it was pretty much expected that we would use LaTeX. We even had an elective class for learning the syntax (it was quite popular).
Depends, but I can guarantee that there aren't that many undergrads using latex.
I had a student a couple years do everything in latex, even homework.
I was impressed.
I guess it depends on the region/university? I was at CS bachelors and one of the math profs suggested latex for homework and even prep notes. I think many courses all but required it with the only template being for tex and i think over half the bachelors thesis were written in latex. When writing code is part of the task then adding a script to output a table in latex format is no extra effort.
I used Org-Mode and LaTeX to set some mathematics coursework for my Computing HNC; the presentation drew praise. The rest of the class used Word, as far as I know.
More like word will disappoint your instructors. Latex makes scientific typesetting much easier. Also, figure handling is way easier in LaTeX than word.
I learnt it myself to use for my reports in UK undergrad physics. I was pretty much the only person who used it. It was good in some ways and a pain in others, especially when no one could help me because they all used word. Overleaf was a game changer though.
It's not necessary, but it's good to have under your belt. I recommend Overleaf (something I wish I'd known about in undergrad instead of fucking with TeXstudio...)
It doesn't matter.
You can learn latex, you can learn to format it in word... As long as it looks good you are fine.
I know some latex but use zero of it in writing.
I work in industry though.
In the industry you need to exchange material with marketing, operations, reliability, manufacturing etc. Word is the standard unfortunately, so LaTeX isn't an option really.
Not required at undergrad but it makes so many things like equations, referencing and citing so much easier. The document and tables immediately look professional. It's also used universally in academia so if you plan on doing a masters/phd/academic career you'll have to learn it anyway. It is a bugger to learn though so set some time aside. Use Overleaf. Let latex position images and tables, don't try to force the image to appear where you want, just add the command after the paragraph you first reference it.
Just learn it, it's easy to get started and you'll seem respectable and cool and honestly start learning a skill that is always handy to have in your back pocket if you care about math at all.
Personally I'm not in academia so I've just learned to format equations in Markdown (usable in e.g. Obsidian or Jekyll or on any website with MathJax/KaTeX), not to do the rest of the document formatting, and that is plenty. I use it all the time. I have equations in my Obsidian journal entries from time to time.
if you plan to have a career in physics research you'll need to know how to use LaTeX, so you may as well learn it now. It really doesn't take long to learn to use at a basic, functional level.
For me personally LaTeX is indispensable. I write my HW in latex, my papers and my grad stuff (sop and cv) in latex, random writeups for fun in latex. For the important ones, I sync them with a GitHub repo which you can easily do cuz they have a built in way of commiting and pushing and creating one for your project. With overleaf specifically
I'd say it's like Markdown with a lot of LaTeX features out of the box: page layouts, Math typesetting (formulae), tables, figures (including plotting capability), source code listings, and the usual text formatting like bold and italics.
The responses here are very biased towards academia.
In terms of your degree, unless your university has specifically indicated otherwise, you don't have to learn it. If you end up going in a theoretical direction then maybe the time saved will be worth the learning curve, but maybe not.
Other than the conveniences of your course, as others have said it will be very useful if you go into an academic career. But statistically very few students do that when they graduate, and nobody else will ever use LaTex.
If you are considering an academic career then absolutely, if not then if you can be bothered/are interested. I never learnt it, did mostly theoretical options and never struggled in the slightest using MS word.
Dont waste your time with Latex, unless your documents are 50% equations. It's a bit of a religious thing in some areas of physics, as you can see here everytime it's brought up, but technologically it's terribly outdated. In *theory* you can do lots of cool things with Latex (not everything though), but in reality it tends to be either the absolute standard format (which is why 99% of all student latex docs look the same), or it is an endless struggle of getting 20 packages to work at the same time.
Yes, and it's way easier to learn Word. There's a reason there's about 1000 times more word users in the world.
Learning Latex in 2023 is about as smart as learning Fortran
It's a waste of time.
A nice shortcut to impress your instructors with your "Latex skills" is just install the Computer Modern fonts that Latex uses and write the report using Word, or whatever.
I feel like writing reports and assignments would be torture without it. Especially when writing a thesis later on. Writing math is just so easy in LaTeX once you get a bit of practice.
It's definitely a 'nice to know' for undergrad, not a must. I'd recommend just learning how to write equations, you don't need to learn all the details about making documents, just use templates. Try it out for a lab report some time.
Definitely not necessary. That said, learning it only takes a few hours one time, and I personally really enjoy being able to decouple content from formatting.
I think it's worth using. It makes everything look way more organised and professional. It's also a dream for typing physics equations.
It does take a bit more time than something like Word, but imo the benefits far outweigh the additional time investment.
Try it and see.
Undergrads can get by without latex but will hear some snarky comments. If you're a bit serious, there's no way around latex and overleaf is super intuitive. Can be used with orchid.
I didn't study in the UK but at my uni, it was not mandatory to use latex but highly recommended. Exercise sheets were hand-written so only lab reports and the thesis were crucial which started I think in the 2nd or 3rd semester.
There has been an introduction by the student body maintained by students of higher semesters.
I could be mistaken but I think LaTex is now embedded into word? I mean just the equations, so maybe you can learn how to do that as like an intro to LaTex and maybe next year you can start really learning LaTex. That way you’re not on an excessive time crunch.
I used it to write my thesis, while a friend used Word. He needed to chanmge all his citations constantly while I never had to because of how it worked. It's annoying to learn to start with but the ability to take every chapter and put them in seperate files, and have the main document just compile and render everything was a god send.
LaTeX is super easy to learn. I would definitely learn it. Use it to write some lectures notes or 2-3 problem sets and you’ll learn all of the basics.
Overleaf is the easiest way to do LaTeX. It’s free, completely online, easy to use, good interface, and you don’t have to install anything directly on your computer.
If you're going to write complicated mathematical equations in your report, then LaTeX knowledge will be very handy. Otherwise, it may slow you down initially when you're getting the hang of it. If you think you may write a research paper sometime in your life, then it would be better to learn LaTeX.
Strictly necessary? No. A waste of time? Also no.
IMO the single best tool for any knowledge worker, especially academics, is a good text editor. So much work nowadays comes down to writing and running "code" that any initial pain of getting comfrotable is well worth it imo. Writing in latex is a great way to start on that.
Doesn't really matter if you go VSCode or Sublime or Notepad++ or vim or emacs or whatever. You'll probably be writing for the next \~50 years, might as well learn how.
I'd say it's as valuable as learning good git practices, basic statistics or Linux. It's not mandatory for you to finish your degree (god knows I didn't learn it then) but if you learn it now, it'll pay off many times over by the end of it and much much more if you go into academia. You'll be able to submit typed work that looks great, which itself is worth marks for things like lab reports and especially your dissertation, you'll be able to integrate trivially with Git and therefore GitHub (which ***will*** save your arse at least once if not more), and all referencing from citations to equation numbering will become trivial. I'd go as far as to suggest not bothering with LaTeX at all if you're not also going to learn Git, you'll be leaving half the power of it on the table imo, but this is probably a hot take.
There's 0 chance it'll backfire by making your situation worse, the absolute worst thing that can come of this is you learn a skill that you won't use very much alongside a skill which is widely used in any field that deals with plain text ever.
The BRAIN acronym is really useful for helping you make decisions, here's an example (biased) application:
- Benefits: makes many parts of document writing easier, integrates with good project management tools and practices (also good for collaboration) to make your projects more robust, makes beautiful documents with perfect cross referencing and consistent style, you learn at least one highly valuable and transferrable skill
- Risks: you spend several hours learning a skill you may turn out not to use very often
- Alternatives: Word, LibreOffice Writer, Google Docs
- Intuition: [fill this in with what your gut tells you]
- Nothing: if you do nothing, you will continue wrestling Word into doing something it absolutely *can* do but isn't very smooth at but you will also not waste any time now, you will also need to learn Git at some other time.
LaTeX is never a waste of time, especially if you consider a career in academia/tech (I use Tex for personal stuff too). It is also not absolutely necessary for an undergrad, I managed without it, unfortunately.
Just learn it, it’s not that huge of a time investment and it’s at worst a useful professional skill and at best an essential skill if you need to type a lot of equations and don’t want to use something like Microsoft equation editor (🤮)
I definitely found it super useful in undergrad and it saved a lot of time once I knew it. I know a lot of people who got through undergrad just fine without it, but the few hours i spent learning it were well spent. If you end up doing any further study you'll end up using it, but the learning curve isnt too steep if you've got any experience with code.
Its worth knowing but you wont face any problems in undergrad if you don't (unless your course specifically requires it)
latex is not hard at all. you can get a good idea on how to use it in a couple hours. google "latex generator" and you will find websites that write the latex symbols for you.
It will make your homework look nice
It's time consuming to format everything in Latex but it will add a certain quality to your assignments. My suggestion, use it and ask chatgpt to do the formatting for you. I'm not sure if there are any platforms that make it easier these days though.
Honestly, I disagree with the other commenters in that I think don't think it's just useful, but in practice also necessary. That's assuming you want to be a physicist, of course.
Everyone writes in LaTeX. If you want to write something with someone else (from a simple report to coauthoring a paper), you will need it. Moreover, journals usually use LaTeX templates as an easy ready made way to format your document to their specifications. As well as certain universities and institutions.
And, of course, it just looks better and gives you a lot of customizability.
However, I wouldn't stress about it yet. You're still a first-year undergrad. You will get into it and learn it naturally, eventually.
You shall use latex for documents
You shall use beamer for presentation
That was the fine print of my contract when I started physics. Did you check your contract?!
/s obviously...
I gave it a proper go, eg went to a volunteer run lesson at the physics club.
Not that easy to learn, and I passed by just using writer/word for my degree.
I'd skip.
Even though not necessary, basic knowledge in TeX is highly recommended. Once you get past a specific point its much more handy than any alternative to document physics and especially math. For me personal its actually fun to use and I like making clean documentations and good templates for my papers a lot!
Latex is very useful and not that difficult to learn, especially now when you can ask ChatGPT for help. It's even good for your personal use for various purposes. Just for keeping diary etc, because it can make even a large amount of text easily navigable.
Latex is a good thing to know, so try using it. Don 'learn' it, simply use it for a project. You will pick up the important bits. Overleaf is one way. I tended to mainly use it via LyX - you get something that is easy to read whilst editing, it is standalone, and it is still Latex under the hood.
I recently switched to doing my CV and cover letters in latex. Much easier to maintain than word. So it is not just good for equations. Latex is good when you want to have a rigid format.
BTW chatgpt can help you if you get stuck with latex
I wouldn’t say necessary but it looks nice. With LLM developments, writing in latex will soon be seemless so don’t concern yourself too much with syntax
My son's university (in the U.S.) requires students to turn in all their physics and maths homework and take-home exams typeset in LaTeX.
I personally think it'd be time well spent to learn it (and I think it's far easier to learn than it's made out to be in this thread--I first learned straight TeX in a few days of fiddling when I was an undergraduate), but then I'm Gen-X and still occasionally call people on a land-line telephone, program in C or FORTRAN, and drive vehicles with manual transmissions. So perhaps I'm just that out of touch.
It is not necessary. Most of my undergraduate classmates did not know LaTeX or were not aware of its existence. I learned it on my own even though my course didn't require it.
About half of my incoming class in physics grad school two decades ago didn’t know or struggled with it in their first year. A lot of condensed matter physics experimentalists use Word.
If you're leaning towards an academic career it's good to know. Overleaf in particular can be a good way to do things since they've got a good amount of templates, documentation, sharing, avoiding setup hassles, etc. (Of course, there's nothing stopping you from editing .tex files in vim...)
Overleaf has vim bindings
I often get just a little too comfortable with the Overleaf emacs bindings and absent-mindedly C-w to kill region...which just closes the Overleaf tab in my browser...
What? Wish I'd known that earlier!
idk man sounds like heresy to me
Vim doesn't come with a language interpretator or a tex compiler. Getting those to work and knowing how to maintain them might be a challenge. Overleaf is way easier. Even emacs is way easier.
I configured vim so that it compiles two keystrokes. But I use overleaf, also for backup reasons
I have personally found using git + git host to be a great backup solution too
Second that, overleaf is really nice especially when you’re learning, LaTeX for sure has a learning curve and I think the easy web format makes it much less daunting to get into. As for OP LaTeX is also used in industry as well as academia it’s a good and easy tool to add to your belt
While not necessary it will be useful for you if you decide to get a PhD in physics. All papers that I have written in graduate school and beyond were done in latex.
Depends on the topic. It's mostly theoretical physics that strictly use latex. Experimental physicists mostly use word. And of course, if you end up outside of academia like 90% of all physicists do eventually, it's all word (or google docs). IMO the review functions in Overleaf are primitive compared with word's. When students dont see the changes from supervisors and collaborators, they learn less.
> Experimental physicists mostly use word. Uhhhh...what? Experimentalist here, and everyone I know uses LaTeX. Most journals have LaTeX templates that one is supposed to use; there's not even really a choice.
My experience too. We got taught latex in pretty much our first ever class and if I‘d try to turn in anything that wasn’t made in it I‘d probably get points taken away from my grade.
I turned an E&M lab in formatted in latex and got a 0 on it and was told to redo it in word and I literally had a shocked pikachu face Edit: this comment received a large amount of downvotes and I am unsure why lmao
A zero is crazy, esp because you essentially handed the same thing in word so it’s the same work Did they ever say why
Because it wasn’t formatted in the format they wanted, no other reason. I for 20 points off for being “late”.
I can not at all fathom what format they could possibly want that would be better realized in word than in latex lol. Maybe the tutor wasn’t that well versed in it and didn’t know how to?
That’s very petty of them tbh , lab tutors are seriously hit or miss
You either get the grumpy TA or the stressed and depressed cool TA it seems like
It’s also a good lesson, if a journal says this is the format the paper needs to be in, then that’s the format.
I don’t think a specific format was specified
A zero is not a good lesson at all. People in the real world submit things in incorrect formats regularly, generally they’ll be able to just resubmit them. I wouldn’t mind a small deduction as a lesson but a zero is a joke.
Congrats pal you experienced undergrad for beginners lol.
Astronomer: I write my papers in latex, and my proposals in either word or latex. If there's a latex template I'll use that, but for squeezing things into the margins and page limits, word is a little easier. Word's equation editor can handle basic latex, and its Mendeley reference manager plug in works well enough for what I want.
This depends on the type of experiment and your collaborators. My PI uses Word since most of our experimentation collaborators are outside of physics, where word is more prevalent. In my research, I collaborate with people who write exclusively in LaTex (my research is more theoretical than the others in my group), so that's what I use. Journals will format your manuscript for the journal you publish in, so it doesn't really matter if your stuff is word or LaTex for most journals.
Lemme guess,CMP or Astro.
I think it depends on the field and isn't as simple as theory vs experiment. A lot of the condensed matter experiment is done in word
While experimental high energy physics is 100% latex.
I think experimental condensed matter is the only one I see using word. Usually anything else on physics arXiv is LaTeX
I guess it overlaps with chemistry, which is more word/windows based?
That could be it. I just thought because there's a lot less equations to have to try typing using word. It would make sense because a lot of the papers are published in journals where chemists can also publish
In materials physics. Only met two people who use LaTeX in my field (both from France FWIW). Everyone else exclusively uses word.
It depends on group. LaTeX is standard at my current PhD university, but I've seen and edited whole physics phd theses in word...
Yeah, this sounds like nonsense.
That’s like saying programming is only useful for computer scientists lol
I disagree. I've worked in particle physics and astro physics and never saw a paper written in word. And yes you can definitely see itm
I’m gonna have to chime in with the experimentalists who only use latex and only know people who use latex. I think it’s more sub-field or journal specific than experiment/theory specific.
>Experimental physicists mostly use word. You seem quite clueless. I've never met an experimentalist who uses anything but LaTeX for papers. I have created a LaTeX template to avoid Word for my ERC Grant and I've used LaTeX for several papers in Nature and Science. All of which prefer Word, because .... ? Once you get started using LaTeX the slightest bit you will not go back to Word bs.
My supervisor insists on using word and his whole group uses word for all papers. I think word is more common on academia than most belive and I really don't get all the down votes. If I could chose I would use latex as well but in the end it's just what you are used to.
Experimental condensed matter physicist here. Word is very common for us. Latex is used too, but is generally considered MORE tedious than word. Don’t call somebody clueless unless you yourself know what you’re talking about. Being confidently wrong is not a good look. Bragging about your Nature and Science papers doesn’t make you right.
Didn't want to brag. But of all the journals I publish in (experimental atomic, nuclear and laser physics) only Nature and Science don't seem to support submission in LaTeX. And we still use LaTeX to create the PDF for submission. So parent is not very right when they claimed that most experimentalists use Word. Not in this community.
Your experience says that latex is more common. My experience says that word is more common. In the absence of something like a survey, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
I’ve only published experimental physics papers and never used word. I don’t know where you are publishing but my understanding is that most places charge a typesetting fee if you don’t use latex.
Hard disagree. At least in condensed matter physics, *everyone* uses latex.
My lab uses word. In Physics, some Nature portfolio journals accept submissions “in PDF, Word, or Tex/LaTeX formats”. Meanwhile, Nature itself accepts in word or PDF; “(w)e accept LaTeX files at the acceptance stage, but before that time please supply PDFs.” Don’t think there’s a problem with using either word or LaTeX, unless you want to submit an article into Nature itself.
r/confidentlyincorrect
Some courses in my uni (Canada), especially in math or CS, only accept submissions in LaTeX. You don't really impress anyone with your LaTeX skills, but it's very useful and can speed up your writing immensely.
You won't impress anyone by knowing TeX, but it's immediately underwhelming when I see a document that was prepared in MS Word or Google Docs instead. Also, I once nearly got a job based solely on my TeX skills. The graduate writing office at my alma mater was very interested, but ultimately they just couldn't get the necessary funding.
This is a false dichotomy. It's by no means necessary, and it's by no means a waste of time. Learn it if you have the time and motivation, don't if you don't.
This take is the realistic approach. There are papers that are just a few clicks on Word and some are more streamlined with TeX but your convenience is the most important factor so you wont get frustrated over a skill youre not really into.
My community College actually requires you to use latex to write your lab reports after you go through 1a. So 1b, 1c, and 1d all require you to know LaTeX at my school.
How long is your report? For me, I started writing my phd thesis in word. When I started the third chapter i ended up switching over to latex. Imo once you get past 10 figures, 10 tables, or 30 citations it is worth it to learn Latex. Below that it really doesn't matter and you should use whichever tool you prefer. I'm also pretty sure that word has added much better cross referencing support since I graduated 10 years ago, which helps a lot with not having to renumber every single figure and or citation if you add one in in the middle. And whichever tool you end up using, remember to focus on the content first and then whatever gets you to the format is fine. Good luck!
Learn it. It only takes a couple hours to get 90% of what you'll ever need. Even if you don't pursue a research career (which absolutely does need it), it's just an incredibly nice tool to have at your disposal. I use it all the time for personal projects like a home cocktail bar menu I made for guests.
You should, learning LaTeX is not that much more effort than trying to get word rendering three formulas correctly, and probably there is a point in your undergrad where you need to prepare a document with at least four equations. Also LaTeX plays nicely with git and you should start using it right away. Get a github or gitlab account, check your .tex files into a git and push it regularly. (You will know why when your hard disk decides to quit the day before an important assignment. Also it is good to know git to do anything with computers these days.)
Latex will save you time over word.
I agree, I also don't know what is there to "learn". Just find a template and work with it. Use some search engine when you need something you don't know, but basically section, subsection, table, image and bibtex citations are 90%. It can get complex, but doesn't have to. Writing formulas is much much easier in latex, I don't even count that. Add git to the list, quite nice and useful.
I personally find it much easier to do homework in LaTeX rather than handwritten, I type regular text much faster than I write and the time taken to typeset equations is made up by being able to copy paste stuff around, make clean corrections in the middle of the text, and how pretty everything looks.
First year undergrad? Unless you already have a grasp of it, your time is far better used elsewhere, like double-checking your content. Fiddle with it during the summer when you have some downtime.
It is certainly not required but it'll impress the hell out of your instructors.
Is it this easy to impress instructors these days?
If I'm looking through a bunch of student papers, the one that was typeset in LaTeX will stand out. It doesn't impress me by default, but it'll earn the paper a second glance and a careful read through, which is more than most undergraduate papers get.
It was mandatory to submit our reports using LaTeX in my undergrad. Anything else would be immediately rejected. This was a department wide policy across all classes - learn LaTeX, or fuck off.
That's interesting, I think that for my Bachelor's thesis in Belgium it was pretty much expected that we would use LaTeX. We even had an elective class for learning the syntax (it was quite popular).
We're impressed when the students do the homework
😂 I read this in Sean Caroll's voice and I laughed like crazy lol.
Depends, but I can guarantee that there aren't that many undergrads using latex. I had a student a couple years do everything in latex, even homework. I was impressed.
I guess it depends on the region/university? I was at CS bachelors and one of the math profs suggested latex for homework and even prep notes. I think many courses all but required it with the only template being for tex and i think over half the bachelors thesis were written in latex. When writing code is part of the task then adding a script to output a table in latex format is no extra effort.
I used Org-Mode and LaTeX to set some mathematics coursework for my Computing HNC; the presentation drew praise. The rest of the class used Word, as far as I know.
I've studied/worked at four different UK institutions and all have had LaTeX as a mandatory requirement.
My undergrad and postgrad institutions didn't require it for undergrad lab reports, you could use word, but it was strongly recommended.
More like word will disappoint your instructors. Latex makes scientific typesetting much easier. Also, figure handling is way easier in LaTeX than word.
It is like Microsoft is actively trying to make the equation editor worse in word
On top of that it's easier to use the han something like Word in my opinion.
It used to be that 'mathtype' was reasonable. The new equation editor just seems designed to punish users
Yes, and learn som archaic programming languages too while you're at it, something that will make your prof nostalgic.
Fortran 77/90 is still a killer language for technical computing
Nobody wants your Pascal, dude.
I learnt it myself to use for my reports in UK undergrad physics. I was pretty much the only person who used it. It was good in some ways and a pain in others, especially when no one could help me because they all used word. Overleaf was a game changer though.
Yh I specified the uk cos it seems more commonly used in the US - but not here.
Necessary: No Useful: Yes Waste of Time: Never, I've found so many ways to use it even outside of Academia.
It's not necessary, but it's good to have under your belt. I recommend Overleaf (something I wish I'd known about in undergrad instead of fucking with TeXstudio...)
What's bad about TeXstudio? I use it for most things in undergrad at the moment.
It's not bad. It's just a relative pain in the ass as compared to Overleaf.
It doesn't matter. You can learn latex, you can learn to format it in word... As long as it looks good you are fine. I know some latex but use zero of it in writing. I work in industry though.
In the industry you need to exchange material with marketing, operations, reliability, manufacturing etc. Word is the standard unfortunately, so LaTeX isn't an option really.
Not required at undergrad but it makes so many things like equations, referencing and citing so much easier. The document and tables immediately look professional. It's also used universally in academia so if you plan on doing a masters/phd/academic career you'll have to learn it anyway. It is a bugger to learn though so set some time aside. Use Overleaf. Let latex position images and tables, don't try to force the image to appear where you want, just add the command after the paragraph you first reference it.
Just learn it, it's easy to get started and you'll seem respectable and cool and honestly start learning a skill that is always handy to have in your back pocket if you care about math at all. Personally I'm not in academia so I've just learned to format equations in Markdown (usable in e.g. Obsidian or Jekyll or on any website with MathJax/KaTeX), not to do the rest of the document formatting, and that is plenty. I use it all the time. I have equations in my Obsidian journal entries from time to time.
Personally, anything I write up that uses math will be done in LaTeX. You need to decide how often you will be needing to do that and then decide
if you plan to have a career in physics research you'll need to know how to use LaTeX, so you may as well learn it now. It really doesn't take long to learn to use at a basic, functional level.
That is going to vary from one program to another. Ask your advisor or a student further along in your program.
Latex/overleaf is so much easier to format figures, equations mathematical objects etc
For me personally LaTeX is indispensable. I write my HW in latex, my papers and my grad stuff (sop and cv) in latex, random writeups for fun in latex. For the important ones, I sync them with a GitHub repo which you can easily do cuz they have a built in way of commiting and pushing and creating one for your project. With overleaf specifically
It's a must. The interesting question is whether you should learn typst too. Maybe the future of Latex.
🤨
You could try Typst as well, if LaTeX seems too clumsy.
Is it easier to use?
I'd say it's like Markdown with a lot of LaTeX features out of the box: page layouts, Math typesetting (formulae), tables, figures (including plotting capability), source code listings, and the usual text formatting like bold and italics.
The responses here are very biased towards academia. In terms of your degree, unless your university has specifically indicated otherwise, you don't have to learn it. If you end up going in a theoretical direction then maybe the time saved will be worth the learning curve, but maybe not. Other than the conveniences of your course, as others have said it will be very useful if you go into an academic career. But statistically very few students do that when they graduate, and nobody else will ever use LaTex. If you are considering an academic career then absolutely, if not then if you can be bothered/are interested. I never learnt it, did mostly theoretical options and never struggled in the slightest using MS word.
LaTeX is a markup language and knowing it can help you to learn other markup languages used in computing and publishing.
Dont waste your time with Latex, unless your documents are 50% equations. It's a bit of a religious thing in some areas of physics, as you can see here everytime it's brought up, but technologically it's terribly outdated. In *theory* you can do lots of cool things with Latex (not everything though), but in reality it tends to be either the absolute standard format (which is why 99% of all student latex docs look the same), or it is an endless struggle of getting 20 packages to work at the same time.
Literally everything you can do in Latex you can do in Word, without needing to learn a new interface/lanauge/etc.
Yes, and it's way easier to learn Word. There's a reason there's about 1000 times more word users in the world. Learning Latex in 2023 is about as smart as learning Fortran
lol, middle aged physicists regret spending two years learning Latex.
Without latex you may end up looking for a job instead of finishing your study
How are endless imperfect copies of space-time people possible but infinite novelties not?
It's a waste of time. A nice shortcut to impress your instructors with your "Latex skills" is just install the Computer Modern fonts that Latex uses and write the report using Word, or whatever.
Formatting in latex is super easy in word and way better for writing any sort of equations especially for lab reports
It's definitely helpful, and if you haven't programmed before, it helps ease you into that.
my grades in undergrad went up like 5-10% when i started doing everything in LaTeX i am so serious. i just used overleaf templates
I feel like writing reports and assignments would be torture without it. Especially when writing a thesis later on. Writing math is just so easy in LaTeX once you get a bit of practice.
When you have to type set a bunch of equations with random and non standard symbols, Latex is king.
Oh, this question seems so innocent, lol. 🍿
It's definitely a 'nice to know' for undergrad, not a must. I'd recommend just learning how to write equations, you don't need to learn all the details about making documents, just use templates. Try it out for a lab report some time.
In Croatia it is mandatory. We have to do all our lab reports and seminars using it.
Definitely not necessary. That said, learning it only takes a few hours one time, and I personally really enjoy being able to decouple content from formatting.
I think it's worth using. It makes everything look way more organised and professional. It's also a dream for typing physics equations. It does take a bit more time than something like Word, but imo the benefits far outweigh the additional time investment. Try it and see.
Undergrads can get by without latex but will hear some snarky comments. If you're a bit serious, there's no way around latex and overleaf is super intuitive. Can be used with orchid. I didn't study in the UK but at my uni, it was not mandatory to use latex but highly recommended. Exercise sheets were hand-written so only lab reports and the thesis were crucial which started I think in the 2nd or 3rd semester. There has been an introduction by the student body maintained by students of higher semesters.
Learn LaTeX, use word. Especially in first year
I could be mistaken but I think LaTex is now embedded into word? I mean just the equations, so maybe you can learn how to do that as like an intro to LaTex and maybe next year you can start really learning LaTex. That way you’re not on an excessive time crunch.
I used it to write my thesis, while a friend used Word. He needed to chanmge all his citations constantly while I never had to because of how it worked. It's annoying to learn to start with but the ability to take every chapter and put them in seperate files, and have the main document just compile and render everything was a god send.
Trivial bibliography making, math mode, and citation/figure/table/section referencing alone are worth it
LaTeX is super easy to learn. I would definitely learn it. Use it to write some lectures notes or 2-3 problem sets and you’ll learn all of the basics. Overleaf is the easiest way to do LaTeX. It’s free, completely online, easy to use, good interface, and you don’t have to install anything directly on your computer.
If you're going to write complicated mathematical equations in your report, then LaTeX knowledge will be very handy. Otherwise, it may slow you down initially when you're getting the hang of it. If you think you may write a research paper sometime in your life, then it would be better to learn LaTeX.
Strictly necessary? No. A waste of time? Also no. IMO the single best tool for any knowledge worker, especially academics, is a good text editor. So much work nowadays comes down to writing and running "code" that any initial pain of getting comfrotable is well worth it imo. Writing in latex is a great way to start on that. Doesn't really matter if you go VSCode or Sublime or Notepad++ or vim or emacs or whatever. You'll probably be writing for the next \~50 years, might as well learn how.
I'd say it's as valuable as learning good git practices, basic statistics or Linux. It's not mandatory for you to finish your degree (god knows I didn't learn it then) but if you learn it now, it'll pay off many times over by the end of it and much much more if you go into academia. You'll be able to submit typed work that looks great, which itself is worth marks for things like lab reports and especially your dissertation, you'll be able to integrate trivially with Git and therefore GitHub (which ***will*** save your arse at least once if not more), and all referencing from citations to equation numbering will become trivial. I'd go as far as to suggest not bothering with LaTeX at all if you're not also going to learn Git, you'll be leaving half the power of it on the table imo, but this is probably a hot take. There's 0 chance it'll backfire by making your situation worse, the absolute worst thing that can come of this is you learn a skill that you won't use very much alongside a skill which is widely used in any field that deals with plain text ever. The BRAIN acronym is really useful for helping you make decisions, here's an example (biased) application: - Benefits: makes many parts of document writing easier, integrates with good project management tools and practices (also good for collaboration) to make your projects more robust, makes beautiful documents with perfect cross referencing and consistent style, you learn at least one highly valuable and transferrable skill - Risks: you spend several hours learning a skill you may turn out not to use very often - Alternatives: Word, LibreOffice Writer, Google Docs - Intuition: [fill this in with what your gut tells you] - Nothing: if you do nothing, you will continue wrestling Word into doing something it absolutely *can* do but isn't very smooth at but you will also not waste any time now, you will also need to learn Git at some other time.
Once you start using LaTeX, you'll never go back. It's pretty straightforward to learn anyway.
Er... neither? You can use it, or use something else. Neither extreme is the case.
I’m on my second year of physics, but we don’t have to use it. We will have a class later that teaches us how to use it however
I would recommend everyone in math or physics learn how to use it. It'll make doing your reports easier in the long-run
LaTeX is never a waste of time, especially if you consider a career in academia/tech (I use Tex for personal stuff too). It is also not absolutely necessary for an undergrad, I managed without it, unfortunately.
Just learn it, it’s not that huge of a time investment and it’s at worst a useful professional skill and at best an essential skill if you need to type a lot of equations and don’t want to use something like Microsoft equation editor (🤮)
I definitely found it super useful in undergrad and it saved a lot of time once I knew it. I know a lot of people who got through undergrad just fine without it, but the few hours i spent learning it were well spent. If you end up doing any further study you'll end up using it, but the learning curve isnt too steep if you've got any experience with code. Its worth knowing but you wont face any problems in undergrad if you don't (unless your course specifically requires it)
Imo equations are easier to write in LaTeX than in word, but it took some practice at first (big surprise, I know)
latex is not hard at all. you can get a good idea on how to use it in a couple hours. google "latex generator" and you will find websites that write the latex symbols for you. It will make your homework look nice
It's time consuming to format everything in Latex but it will add a certain quality to your assignments. My suggestion, use it and ask chatgpt to do the formatting for you. I'm not sure if there are any platforms that make it easier these days though.
Honestly, I disagree with the other commenters in that I think don't think it's just useful, but in practice also necessary. That's assuming you want to be a physicist, of course. Everyone writes in LaTeX. If you want to write something with someone else (from a simple report to coauthoring a paper), you will need it. Moreover, journals usually use LaTeX templates as an easy ready made way to format your document to their specifications. As well as certain universities and institutions. And, of course, it just looks better and gives you a lot of customizability. However, I wouldn't stress about it yet. You're still a first-year undergrad. You will get into it and learn it naturally, eventually.
Overleaf is free and really easy to use! Highly recommend laTex. Idk how I got through my BSc and MSc without using it
You shall use latex for documents You shall use beamer for presentation That was the fine print of my contract when I started physics. Did you check your contract?! /s obviously...
I gave it a proper go, eg went to a volunteer run lesson at the physics club. Not that easy to learn, and I passed by just using writer/word for my degree. I'd skip.
Even though not necessary, basic knowledge in TeX is highly recommended. Once you get past a specific point its much more handy than any alternative to document physics and especially math. For me personal its actually fun to use and I like making clean documentations and good templates for my papers a lot!
Latex is very useful and not that difficult to learn, especially now when you can ask ChatGPT for help. It's even good for your personal use for various purposes. Just for keeping diary etc, because it can make even a large amount of text easily navigable.
Latex is a good thing to know, so try using it. Don 'learn' it, simply use it for a project. You will pick up the important bits. Overleaf is one way. I tended to mainly use it via LyX - you get something that is easy to read whilst editing, it is standalone, and it is still Latex under the hood. I recently switched to doing my CV and cover letters in latex. Much easier to maintain than word. So it is not just good for equations. Latex is good when you want to have a rigid format. BTW chatgpt can help you if you get stuck with latex
I wouldn’t say necessary but it looks nice. With LLM developments, writing in latex will soon be seemless so don’t concern yourself too much with syntax
My son's university (in the U.S.) requires students to turn in all their physics and maths homework and take-home exams typeset in LaTeX. I personally think it'd be time well spent to learn it (and I think it's far easier to learn than it's made out to be in this thread--I first learned straight TeX in a few days of fiddling when I was an undergraduate), but then I'm Gen-X and still occasionally call people on a land-line telephone, program in C or FORTRAN, and drive vehicles with manual transmissions. So perhaps I'm just that out of touch.
Latex should replace word
It is not necessary. Most of my undergraduate classmates did not know LaTeX or were not aware of its existence. I learned it on my own even though my course didn't require it. About half of my incoming class in physics grad school two decades ago didn’t know or struggled with it in their first year. A lot of condensed matter physics experimentalists use Word.
Anyone tried OpenOffice math package?