Lecture Notes

Lecture notes are useful for the entire class, and in fact many people rely on them to fill in for what they may have missed in lecture. As such, it is important that you make the lecture notes clear.

Lecture notes are taken in Latex. If you do not know latex, then you should pick up one of several documents available on athena to help you learn. Try Latex on Athena or Inessential Latex.


First off, before writing anything, you should look at the Earlier Years page, which should have links to lecture notes for previous years. Find the ones that matter for this lecture, and look at them (print them out if you need).

After you've seen them enough, log onto Athena, go to the course locker, and get the template:

     attach 6.857
     cd /mit/6.857/lectures

The template is named template.tex. Prior latex source for lecture notes is available in /mit/6.857/OldStuff/, and you can cut and paste from those as much as you like, BUT you should make the notes you write better than that of years prior. Do not just cut+paste. Please try and get the notes done within a week of the lecture, and if there are problems, please contact the TA.

If you have images to include, please use a structured drawing program if possible. Some examples include tgif and xfig , both available in the SIPB locker:

 add sipb; xfig & 
Then, 'export' it as an encapsulated postscript file in portrait mode, and NOT landscape. Also, make sure the image is not too large, or it will get put at the end of the notes. To test it out, follow the instructions in the template.

Using FrameMaker generates useless postscript, so PLEASE don't do it.

E-mail your lecture notes to the TA, and they will be photocopied and put up on the web page. If you have images, e-mail the postscript to the TA as well.

Any student who has taken a set of notes for the class, and has done a good job with them, will have his/her lowest homework grade dropped from the final grade computation (just skip the final problems set if you like all your grades).


Last Modified: October 10, 1997
Yoav Yerushalmi
yoav@mit.edu