Get ready for LaTeXworkshop

While arranging a workshop on LaTeX what you need to do?
Lab arrangements

1) Install LaTeX :  There are many flavours of LaTeX. TeXlive is one of the best LaTeX flavour. One can download it from TUG site. https://www.tug.org/texlive/quickinstall.html

2) Install IDE for LaTeX: Some of the famous IDE are Kile on linux, TeXmaker on Linux, and other O.S.

TeXworks is one of the best IDE I have seen as you can view the output side by your code. TeX works is good for beginners to advance level.

In case every thing else fails ShareLaTeX is online option for editing and compiling LaTeX documents.

3) Please make sure that you have install beamer class as well as IEEEtran class.

• beamer is useful for preparation of presentations.
• IEEEtran is for research paper writing as per the  IEEE standards.

4) Please check internet for any problem of installation, compilation, documentation etc. There are many many sites who provides support, there are many mailing list for latex support.

• Stackexchange
• Indian TeX user  group
• International TeX User Group (TUG)

5) Make sure that LCD projector, Screen and sound system (if required) is ready in the lab.

 

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Scilab: quick ref card

Scilab is an Open source software for numerical computing. website:http://scilab.org

Scilab is very useful for engineering students and professionals.

It can handle data in matrix format.  Operations can be directly done on matrix. It can handle polynomials in one variable.

Here is the quick ref card for scilab : scilab- quick -sheet

A few graphics generated by scilab:

   

R programming, Data Analysis and Data Mining

 

For statistical data handling,  data analysis, data visualization R-programming is one of the best  programming language. R is Free and  Open source Software. Here is the license details of R.

• It has nice GUI like r-studio and many more.

• R is well supported by user groups, mailing list and blogs.  http://www.r-bloggers.com/

• R programming  version 3.1.1 has been released.  One can download R from http://www.r-project.org/

Nice package for data analysis with  r -programming is shiny.

Companies are looking for making more business by analyzing customer data. Data mining is one the growing research area which is used by many industries. R programming rank first as a data mining tool. Read more on this blog.

 

TEX Live for LaTeX

TeX live is the sure way of getting most of the popular and essential TeX related files, packages, compilers.
TeX Live has collection of TeX related programs, packages for Linux and other OS.
For more details of Tex Live visit http://www.tug.org/texlive/

TEXlive 2013 released.
Latest release of TEX Live 2013 is now available
Here is the link to know more about how to download iso : http://www.tug.org/texlive/acquire-iso.html

Look at the link for quick information on how to install LaTeX from TeXlive http://www.tug.org/texlive/quickinstall.html

Nice Video on Linux

Must watch video.
Share it with your friends and students.
What the Tech Industry Has Learned from Linus Torvalds:
Jim Zemlin at TEDxConcordiaUPortland
Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XTHdcmjenI#at=703

Sharing of knowledge is really a fun.

Sharing of knowledge is really a fun. When you share you should get fun, satisfaction in return.

Therefore from last 10 years I am conducting training programs for College teachers for LaTeX, the beautiful typesetting system.

Earlier people were attending such programs as per their own interest. It was really enjoyable experience.

In any workshop based on FOSS technology, I am trying that participants should become capable of 

• Learn how to learn software on their own, that will help them to work on their research  or project
• Try to find out errors on their own, that way they will learn to help themselves
• Try to understand what is going on and why? No spoon feeding
• Help other participants, so that they will learn more and will understand the benefit of sharing knowledge.
• Related important websites
• Mailing lists

How ever, day by day it is becoming difficult to conduct course on LaTeX.

In Maharashtra, India, there is lot of requirements coming from various places. How ever, they want to attend the course so that either they get certificate or credit of the workshop in terms of marks.

70% participants are due to that.

So quality of participants is very poor. No one want to try on their own. There are no interesting questions from the participants.

They do not want to give try, or don’t want to discuss among other participants. It is very frustrating. 😦

They don’t want to learn how to learn on their own.
Here are points I observed:

• If local organizer is keen on the better participation, the workshop becomes enjoyable
• If management of other technical resources planned carefully, workshop takes better form

Local organizer requires true wish to take care of these things.
Recently I have 2 good workshops. One of which was in Abeda Inamdar college, Pune and other was in Bhopal, RGPV.

Anyways, I came to conclusion that if I want to share knowledge, I should write some document, book and make it available for my satisfaction.

Workshop on LaTeX , Scilab and SAGE

There was workshop on LaTeX, Scilab and SAGE in end of Nov.,12 at Abeda Inamdar College, Pune jointly organized by Dept. of Maths, University of Pune.

There were sessions on Maxima and GAP. SAGE, Maxima, GAP are very useful software for researchers in Mathematis.

Since  through SAGE one can use software like Maxima, Scilab, GAP  and many other scientific FOSS (Free Open source Software).

•  Sage: Number Theory, Calculus,  Graphics, Symbolic computing, Linear Algebra, talks  by Prof. Mangal Narlikar,  Prof. Katre, Prof. Pingle, Prof. Siamwalla, Prof. AjitKumar, Mumbai and Manjusha Joshi, Pune.

• Maxima: symbolic computation, true alternative to Mathematica, talks by Prof. Pawale, Mumbai Univeristy
• GAP: Algebra, Group Theory, talk by Vikas Jadhav, BP, Pune
• Scilab : Numerical Computations, talk by Prof. Katre, Prof. Pingle, Prfo. Madhu Belur, IITBombay and  Manjusha Joshi, Pune.
• LaTeX: Scientific writing, talk by Manjusha Joshi and Prof. Pawale

 

These software supports exact calculations, Number theoretic calculations, algebraic calculations, graphs.

There is  a lot of material, documentation available on internet about these software. There were nice session on all these software. Lab was set up on Ubuntu linux. And participants enjoyed working on Linux as there was no problem of virus. 

Set up of local wiki was done so that participants can immediately get presentations and other documents on their pen drives. We conducted online LaTeX test with the help of moodle(moodle.org)  software. After end of the exam every one could see their performance.

The workshop arranged mainly for Maths college teachers and researchers from Pune university.

Thanks to Dept. of Maths, Pune Univeristy and Abeda Inamdar College for conducting such a wonderful workshop. Participants around 40.

 

 

SAGE: Open source Maths server online

In month of June, 2012, I went to Jalgao, Maharashtra, India for short term teachers program (STTP) to speak on Scilab (scilab.org) and SAGE.

Installation of Scilab is easy and it was installed correctly so we did not had any problem for that session. Some of the participants were did very well. Scilab is basically for numerical computations and many toolboxes are available in scilab. Ideal for Engineering students.

At the time of SAGE, found that on many machines either it was not installed completely or taking lot of time to get open as installed on virtual box.

I wanted to start the session. I checked on online sagemath.org site. Since college had good internet speed, we started to work on online sage.

Around 40 participants worked at a time and we had the session on SAGE with out problem for 2 hours. Thanks to SAGE online service. http://www.sagenb.org/

 

 

 

About

About.

Lucknow Workshop

I went to Lucknow University for workshop on LaTeX and Scilab.
It was faculty training program. Participants are from North India.
They were very enthusiastic about learning, understanding and implementing Scilab.

The workshop took place in month of November, 2011.
As I heard, such type of workshop was arranged for the first time at that place.

We should conduct more workshops in northern part of India.