How use obsidian with mathematics at the university: Zettelkasten and/or anything else

Knowledge management
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Hello there!
I am a big fan of Obsidian and study mathematics in Germany.
In the previous term, I used the classical approach of pen and paper to write down lecture notes.
But this term, I will use Obsidian to organize them (and wirte lecture notes down) and hope to benefit from the structure and potential of the Obsidian system. However, I am not sure which structure to use for writing down definitions, theorems, etc. I am considering the ‘Zettelkasten’ method to link definitions and theorems together, with one definition per note, but I am unsure if this is the best approach.

Does anyone have experience with using Obsidian for mathematics?
I would be very happy if anyone could share their method or workflow!
Many thanks in advance!

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I’ll be watching this thread! I don’t have any solid practices and I’m not a mathematician professionally (only having a B.S. in Math), but I have a couple thoughts:

  • If your course has a corresponding textbook or material, it may be easier to treat it as a literature note before lecture. If you’re typing, that would allow you to use LaTeX and create links at your own pace. You may also capture questions or areas you struggle to understand prior to lecture. Then, you can use the lecture to add additional insights the instructor provides and ask questions that occurred to you that did not occur during pre-reading. After the lecture, your literature note is as good as it will probably get and you can process it. I generally do not like lectures, and if I were to return to taking classes I would love to try this now.
  • If you’re interested in lectures being your primary source, I would suggest either continuing to take notes by hand either using pen and paper or something like Excalidraw or another plugin/workflow for getting handwritten notes into Obsidian. That way, you don’t have to finagle with LaTeX on the fly.
  • Conceptually, I don’t know what the value of making notes on mathematics in Obsidian is. I think there is some value, but I have personally not found it yet. I speak as someone who has yet to make a Zettelkasten work for myself, but a workflow to try could be treating your lectures and pre-readings as literature notes, then capturing key concepts (theorems, definitions, principles) as atomic notes. As you continue through, you can link back to your previous atomic notes. Would that make you more effective at cueing previous things you’ve learned? Maybe! It sounds fun though.
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I’m not a mathematician, but I learn and use a fair amount of math. I also use Zettelkasten and I think it works well for math. The goal is to have one idea per note. I usually start with one big note per chapter/book/lecture, which I then break down into smaller notes. The original big, linear, note eventually turns into a kind of index pointing to the other, atomic, notes.

What constitutes a single idea is entirely up to you. You can also think about adding things in a way that makes them reusable, e.g. if you have a formula that you think will crop up again and again, then give it its own note that you can then embed in your other notes.

I don’t really like lectures or taking lecture notes. I typically use books, slides, and online resources instead. This allows me to take screenshots, which removes some friction. I rely on ChatGPT and Wikipedia for latex, rather than writing it myself.

It can be useful to have some way to add hand-written and hand-drawn content. A lot of people swear by the Excalidraw plugin for that. I tried it for a while and found it aggravating, but everyone is different. Some use photos of pen and paper. Personally, I use the Concepts app on my iPad.

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I’ve been a silent observer of this forum for a while now and I just created an account to answer this.

For context, I am a perusing my Master’s Degree in Electrical engineering, so I am not a mathematics major, but I type A LOT of math in obsidian.

From experience, I can say that it is possible to get fast enough to type math at the speed of the lecture.

My current method for taking notes consists of taking notes by hand, then transcribing them into obsidian and then organizing them.

I’d love to share with you my complete setup, but I highly suggest making something that fits best for you.

My Setup:
Every semester I make a map of content for the current semester and use the ‘homepage’ plugin to make that my semester homepage

This map of content includes a progress bar of the semester, the semesters tentative academic schedule, my classes (as links), and my school schedule

Each class gets its own note as it is its own respective map of content (MOC) for that specific topic. I am careful as to what notes go into this ‘class’ MOC as this is knowledge that I may want to link to or reference later.

Pretend that school starts and I walk in to my materials class. I will take notes by hand. Then as soon as I have time I go into obsidian and I create a note in my materials class MOC that I navigated to from my homepage (which is the current semester). Then I create a note that has a name that is related to the TOPIC not the lecture number or week number etc. Any of that information can get added as metadata if I find it necessary (which I haven’t thus far).

Now for the good stuff: Typing Math
For 2 semesters I used the plugin ‘Quick Latex’. This worked well. When the plugin ‘Latex Suite’ was released my math typing got significantly faster though. The shortcuts for math typing in ‘Latex Suite’ are very convenient and you can add your own which is nice. With this plugin alone and some practice, I was able to type math nearly as fast as I can write it by hand.

Additionally Latex Suite allows for a hotkey to be set to put a box around an equation.

The ability to add your own math shortcuts is powerful as well and shouldn’t be taken for granted. It should be noted that the shortcuts added to the plugin can be tailored such that they can only be triggered (automatically or with the tab key) when in certain typing environments (inline math / math block / reg. typing environment).

Another quality of life plugin is ‘Better Math in Callouts and Block Quotes’. It does what the title suggests. Math in callouts is finicky. This plugin makes it not that way.

Sometimes I find the plugin ‘Obsidian Functionplot’ useful for adding custom made graphs to my notes.

If you ever want to print your notes (or format and share them) , I suggest using the ‘Pandoc’ plugin to export your notes to Latex, then using a Latex editor to modify the note as needed before printing or sharing it.

One plugin that I played with, but haven’t found much utility for is ‘LaTeX-like Theorem & Equation Referencer for Obsidian’. I mention it because for a math major, I would see this being very useful.

My system is simple, but it works for me and I continue to refine it and tailor it to my current needs, and needs that I predict will arise in the future as my knowledge base evolves.

Something I didn’t mention is the reason that I prefer to take notes on paper first. I do this for a few reasons. First, I think better on paper and if I know the notes will be rewritten, I feel some subconscious freedom to think freely on paper as worry less about organization while writing. Additionally, rewriting the notes in obsidian forces me to spend more time with the material which is a net good for learning for me. Finally, even if I feel confident enough to type my notes as the professor is lecturing, if I get caught up on something obsidian-related during lecture, then there is a chance that I could get behind on my notes during lecture which is a bad place to be in while in my program.

I didn’t go in depth with this post, or share any examples (I’m on mobile and this is my first post and im not sure how this works) but if you have any follow up questions, let me know!

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