Neil Tenenholtz
SibinI've been using #AnnotatedEquations in my recent papers. I think it really adds to the readability and understanding of the math.
Here are some examples. It uses #tikz in #latex.
Let me know if you like it. Happy for any feedback.
There is a latex package that makes it easier to use as well and also visually appealing since it normalizes the heights of the various boxes.
Check it out! Thanks to Twitter user @\scien_ti_st for doing all the hard work to convert my ideas to the latex package.
See the difference!
Link to original GitHub Repo: https://github.com/synercys/annotated_latex_equations
Link to latex CTAN package: https://ctan.org/pkg/annotate-equations
GitHub - synercys/annotated_latex_equations: Examples of how to create colorful, annotated equations in Latex using Tikz.
Examples of how to create colorful, annotated equations in Latex using Tikz. - GitHub - synercys/annotated_latex_equations: Examples of how to create colorful, annotated equations in Latex using Tikz.
Happy for any feedback and please spread the word. I'm hoping more papers and communities will be able to use something like this -- to improve the readability and accessibility of mathematical formulae!
Many people also mentioned that they found it useful for (beamer) presentations.
Mikkel Roald-Arbøl@sibin I saw annotated equations for the first time a while ago, and as a non-mathematician it’s hard to explain just hard great a tool it was at de-mystifying mathematics.
I recently released a preprint template, LaPreprint, and this is definitely gonna go in there to be supported out of the box! (And a link in case you’d like to check it out: https://github.com/roaldarbol/LaPreprint)
@roaldarboel great! I’m glad you’re able to find it useful!
BoudThe idea is nice.
Have those got safely through the proofreading stage to "versions of record"?
Proofreaders often make some quite "creative improvements" that can be hard to spot, so official versions often have proofreaders' errors that require the reader to either use common sense to guess what was intended, or read the #ArXiv version to find out what was intended.
@boud yeah we’ve actually published multiple papers that used this. Others have too (in non CS fields). YMMV but I hope it will become commonplace soon.
kate@sibin this is amazing! Makes such a difference in cognitive load!
@mxkate thank you! I’m glad it helps. 😀
Peter 🦈@sibin
I like it. No, I love it! Everytime I tried to add these descriptions manually in my written scrips while I was a student long time ago
I like it. No, I love it! Everytime I tried to add these descriptions manually in my written scrips while I was a student long time ago
katha@sibin I'm producing educational resources and this is sooo great for the task!
Nicolas Pettiaux@sibin much thanks
@npettiaux you’re welcome. Hope it works well for you.
Yael Niv@sibin I love this. Both aesthetically pleasing and helps the reader. We do this in equations in talks, never thought of having it in the paper too!
@Yael thanks! Hope it helps in the paper too.
Matt KrauseNeat! I wonder if there's a way to extract all of the colored labelled....things and make a glossary as well. I've recently seen a few papers with a symbol table and it's so helpful to know at a glance if $p$ is always # of nodes or w/e.
@prokraustinator oh interesting! I think it may be possible but haven’t tried it
neotoy@sibin it's aesthetically beautiful too. makes a huge difference for someone like me who has to puzzle through most formulas.
@neotoy Thank you! Yeah that was part of the goal -- to help improve the readability. Glad you like it 😀
Clément Aubert@sibin Are you using https://github.com/synercys/annotated_latex_equations ?
GitHub - synercys/annotated_latex_equations: Examples of how to create colorful, annotated equations in Latex using Tikz.
Examples of how to create colorful, annotated equations in Latex using Tikz. - GitHub - synercys/annotated_latex_equations: Examples of how to create colorful, annotated equations in Latex using Tikz.
@clementaubert yes! I tried to create a thread but it doesn’t show very well. Here’s my post with two links: the CTAN latex package and my GitHub (which you already found):
@sibin Ah ok, I didn't know it was you! I have tried to use your package, but unfortunately one of my co-author's older version of LaTeX couldn't make it work 😞. I'll give it another tries, for sure!
@clementaubert ah ok. Hope it works now. 🙂
@sibin Well, I know who to ping if it doesn't, now ;-)
@clementaubert ha ha happy to help!😀
Rob Parker@sibin We did the same in https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/3383/2020/essd-12-3383-2020.pdf. It was one of our students that figured out all the #tikz commands though!
@DrRParker nice! Looks great.
We have a latex package now so it’s easier to use:
@sibin Will definitely be checking that out! :-)
Till SawalaNice. But it says something about mastodon that this showed up among my "popular posts" 😅
Yao Li@sibin This looks great. This makes me want to write something just so that I can try it out.
You might have already known this, but Will Crichton also has a lot of great ideas along this line. He presented this in the HATRA workshop last year: https://willcrichton.net/nota/
You might have already known this, but Will Crichton also has a lot of great ideas along this line. He presented this in the HATRA workshop last year: https://willcrichton.net/nota/
Jacob Something
Ethan White@sibin Wow! This is fantastic!
@ethanwhite thank you!😀
Matthew MacLeod@sibin wonderful concept!
@Macleod199 thank you!
danielbolnick@sibin I’ve seen this in a few papers and think it’s a great way to improve connection for less mathematical readers
@danielbolnick I’m glad it’s catching on!
Micah@sibin lol of course it’s latex I don’t recall vanilla tikz
Peter Drake HAS MOVED@peterdrake thanks!
Ha ha that would be cool!
Grant_H@peterdrake @sibin have you looked at codelens on the runestone.Academy thinkcspy course?
Or the thonny debugger? Thonny is an IDE written for teaching.
In different ways, both illustrate python code fragments.
3.14a 🌍@sibin I always wished for the requirement to add legends to equations and even better is to add annotations for better readability!
@314a thanks! Hope you are able to use it 😀
BS-Sensei@sibin This is brilliant, thanks for sharing! I'll definitely be using this for some upcoming conference talks, and sharing it with my colleagues 😄
@johnabs thanks! Hope it works out well for you. If you follow the “thread” there’s a Latex package as well.
Avani@sibin I absolutely love this idea, especially for talks or posters where it's so difficult to get context quickly enough.
@avani yeah didn’t even think about posters! That’s a good idea. 😀
Steuard Jensen@avani @sibin I've done something a bit akin to this in talks myself. I try to use the assertion-evidence slide design model, but for a theoretical physics talk I sometimes don't have images that capture the core ideas. So for one or two slides, I've featured an equation as the focal point, and conceptually labeled pieces of it to make it accessible to non-specialists.
But your approach here looks *great*: I immediately thought "I should use *that*!"
Olivier LeroyI am using it inside Rmd and it is great! thx!
Justin Wilkins@defuneste @sibin There it is! Very nice, thank you
@justinwilkins @defuneste you’re welcome! Glad you like it.
Max R. Cerrina (he/him)@sibin Absolutely adore this.
@alephnaught2tog thanks 😀
Cassandra Granade@sibin @crazy4pi314 and I did something similar to this manually in Inkscape for our book, and seems like it was really helpful for readers. Awesome to see an easier way to do it using LaTeX!