Using point 6 font, you can fit somewhere around 50,000 characters on a single 8 1/2'' x 11'' page. Personally, I am able to read point 6 font comfortably, unassisted. It's about the same size as footnotes in a book. Using \scriptsize in LaTeX achieves a similar, though somewhat less extreme effect: you can cram around around 20,000 characters on a page, once you get rid of the margins.
If you need to refer to formulas or other data, there's a distinct advantage to having it all on one page: you don't have to flip through any pages to find the specific tidbit you are looking for. You just have to look in a different place on the page.
I've put essentially all of the information, minus some of the tables of physical constants, from my physics II course in half a page. Here is the LaTeX source, and here is the PDF output. It helped me on the homeworks, but it has a more lasting advantage. With this sheet of paper, I can solve any problem from physics II, long after I've forgotten the work done during adiabatic expansion or the permittivity of free space. Just because it's the name of the directory where I store them, I call this kind of page full of compressed information a "e;dpage"e;. (Maybe it stands for "documentation page" or "dense page")
By the way, making the dpages is a good review session in itself.
I've considered, but not yet put into practice, using a color-coding scheme on the page. So, e.g., everything about thermodynamics might be colored different shades of green, one shade for each sub-section This would make it easier to find and recall your place.
After the usefulness of the physics dpage, I started some other dpages to refresh my memory of other courses I've taken. Here is a complete dpage made from the book Linear Algebra and its Applications by David C. Lay:
PDF Source
Here is one made from the book Differential Equations by Blanchard, Devaney, and Hall:
PDF Source
Here is one made from the book Mathematical Statistics with Applications (seventh edition) by John E. Freund. This was less of a success; it's more than a page, I omitted some sections, and I doubt that I will ever want to refer back to much of what I included. Perhaps statistics isn't the kind of subject that a dpage works well for. The book has a high density of formulas and it is hard to decide which information is really useful for future reference.
Statistics: PDF Source
The following dpages are all incomplete (I may add to them later).
Graph theory and Combinatorics: PDF Source
Complex Variables: PDF Source
Abstract Algebra: PDF Source
One of the most important things to do when pressed for space is to minimize line height. That means don't use \frac{foo}{bar}, just use (foo)/(bar), and it's often (though not always) a good idea to write $a_1 + ... + a_n$ instead of $\sum_i a_i$. Using the amsmath package helps to reduce the size of summation and integral symbols.
If you need to refer to formulas or other data, there's a distinct advantage to having it all on one page: you don't have to flip through any pages to find the specific tidbit you are looking for. You just have to look in a different place on the page.
I've put essentially all of the information, minus some of the tables of physical constants, from my physics II course in half a page. Here is the LaTeX source, and here is the PDF output. It helped me on the homeworks, but it has a more lasting advantage. With this sheet of paper, I can solve any problem from physics II, long after I've forgotten the work done during adiabatic expansion or the permittivity of free space. Just because it's the name of the directory where I store them, I call this kind of page full of compressed information a "e;dpage"e;. (Maybe it stands for "documentation page" or "dense page")
By the way, making the dpages is a good review session in itself.
I've considered, but not yet put into practice, using a color-coding scheme on the page. So, e.g., everything about thermodynamics might be colored different shades of green, one shade for each sub-section This would make it easier to find and recall your place.
After the usefulness of the physics dpage, I started some other dpages to refresh my memory of other courses I've taken. Here is a complete dpage made from the book Linear Algebra and its Applications by David C. Lay:
PDF Source
Here is one made from the book Differential Equations by Blanchard, Devaney, and Hall:
PDF Source
Here is one made from the book Mathematical Statistics with Applications (seventh edition) by John E. Freund. This was less of a success; it's more than a page, I omitted some sections, and I doubt that I will ever want to refer back to much of what I included. Perhaps statistics isn't the kind of subject that a dpage works well for. The book has a high density of formulas and it is hard to decide which information is really useful for future reference.
Statistics: PDF Source
The following dpages are all incomplete (I may add to them later).
Graph theory and Combinatorics: PDF Source
Complex Variables: PDF Source
Abstract Algebra: PDF Source
One of the most important things to do when pressed for space is to minimize line height. That means don't use \frac{foo}{bar}, just use (foo)/(bar), and it's often (though not always) a good idea to write $a_1 + ... + a_n$ instead of $\sum_i a_i$. Using the amsmath package helps to reduce the size of summation and integral symbols.
© Bart Parkis
Last modified:Tue May 19 19:07:54 2009