Illinois TeX
An Introduction to LaTeX
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The Illinois Institute of Technology used to have a College of Science! That college's Department of Applied Mathematics webpage had a subpage that introduced LaTeX. Well, here is our updated version of it!
Why TeX?
Many professional mathematicians and practitioners of other technical fields write documents for publication and presentation using typesetting software known as TeX or LaTeX. It allows the author great control and flexibility in producing files with equations and figures in a standard format.
Using TeX
Go to Overleaf.com, create an account if you haven't yet, and start your projects! There are plenty of templates offered on the Overleaf platform, created by the community, so it may help to use those for some guidance.
Here's a basic skeleton format!
Most faculty members in the Department of Applied Mathematics use a form of TeX, and many are willing to help fix specific problems as they might arise for the beginning user. Just ask your favourite math professor!
Working in TeX
Formatting and writing the guidelines for a TeX document can be a little intimidating at first, but here are several tutorials to help go from beginner to pro.
Page Layout in LaTeX [pdf] by Piet van Oostrum. A comprehensive formatting and layout guide.
LaTeX Tutorial [pdf] by Jeff Clark. Covers document formatting, basic math and text functions, and presentation topics.
The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX 2 [pdf] by Tobias Oetiker. An accurately-named comprehensive guide to everything in LaTeX. Warning - it's really long.
Math in LaTeX [pdf] by Eric Eaton
Short Math Guide for LaTeX [pdf] by Michael Downes
Using TeX on Your Computer
If you would like to use a TeX program onto a personal computer, it's recommended to use Overleaf. Below are some other resources.
TUG The TeX Users Group, this is the main site for TeX info, downloads, help, and software.
Below is a simple, easy-to-follow guides to downloading and starting a TeX file:
LaTeX for Beginners [pdf] Written by Igor Cialenco.
Making Presentations
Making Presentations
TeX will also create slides for presenting research using a package called Beamer as opposed to using other presentation software such as Microsoft or Lotus PowerPoint.
Making Presentations with BEAMER [pdf] by Igor Cialenco. A simple walk-through for making a slide presentation. Tutorial [tex] Template [tex]
Beamer v3.0 Guide [pdf] by Ki-Joo Kim. A comprehensive and long presentation on all that is possible through BEAMER.
The original page can be found using the Wayback Machine here, with all those old links of yore.
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