Site Map
Resources
Articles will be linked under each “lecture.”
Books
Strongly Recommended
- Stylish Academic Writing, by Helen Sword.
This book is what I will base class on, to give you techniques to write elegantly and stylishly. It is an easy, fun read. Available online with an NYU connection. You can read it at your own time.
Other Resources
- The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White.
A classic style manual, and a good way to revise English grammar. Freely available from a number of sources including Project Gutenberg. - [Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace](https://www.amazon.com/Style-Lessons-Joseph-M-Williams-ebook/dp/B084BY6R32/), by Joseph M. Williams and Joseph Bizup. 13th Ed.
Recommended because you will want to refer to this text over and over in the future. - Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences, by Nicholas J. Higham.
Available online at with an NYU connection. - The Sense of Style, by Steven Pinker.
This lovely book gives many entertaining examples of good and bad writing, and shows the cognitive science behind what makes prose easier or harder to understand.
Tools
Each of you will be required to write a “paper”/”lecture note” in LaTex. You should setup a working LaTex environment (for OS X use MACTex and consider installing homebrew) on the computing system you wish to use for this course (the Linux-based CIMS networked computers have everything you need and more). First-time LaTex users (but also others!) should consider using the WYSIWYG Latex frontend / word processor LyX to start. Students that prefer to work directly with LaTex should take a look at some latex-specific editors, such as the free and portable TeXMaker or (my preference) TeXstudio (installed on Courant’s linux network). More experienced users could use a programming editor that is latex-aware, such as atom-latex or LaTeXTools-sublime. If you want to make presentations in PowerPoint or keynote and include equations, try LatexIt (comes with MACTex on OS X systems), or the IguanaTex PowerPoint plugin (if using Windows, see the “disabled macros” fix).
To co-edit and comment on the written samples as a group, we will use Overleaf, and maybe github+TeX editor of choice (github is integrated with Overleaf pretty nicely).