What are the benefits of using LaTeX over MS Word, especially for a scientific researcher doing a lot of biology and mathematics?
As well as the general benefits others have mentioned I'll try and show you why LaTeX can be better from my own work.First off is general appearance. By default, LaTeX just looks nicer. It's easier to format professionally whereas MS Word takes a lot of effort to look good.This first report was done on Word and took a long time to get a title page that looked generally decent. Trying to put an image in and making things align well usually ends in disaster. In contrast…The one on LaTeX looks a lot more professional. It was easier to make and I never had to worry about alignment issues as you just say \centering or a similar command.I much prefer the two column format to my reports but do you know how difficult that is in Word? Trying to put an image in is a nightmare and will usually result in ruining the format of everything else. And it's almost impossible to change from two columns back to one.In LaTeX you just type in \begin{multicols}{2} or something similar and it works fine. The text also looks nicer and it's much easier to change the margins. You can also easily add in a nice contents page before that corresponds to all the names of the sections.Word does have a similar thing but it's really not up to standard that I just don't bother.Then there's references. I've tried references on Word before but it doesn't automatically order them, it doesn't have square brackets and there's not enough customability in their layout. I usually have to do them manually. Likewise for figure, table and equation numbers. The labeling system on LaTeX is sooooooo much nicer.The reference section at the end doesn't look as good on Word.It just looks basic and unprofessional.This looks a lot nicer.Finally we come to equations. On Word, something like this is a challenge.Thank God for copy and paste!In LateX this would be child's play. In fact something like this can be written out easily too:You also have much more control rather than having to depend on the options word gives you.There are other benefits too such as the Fix package that allows you to draw images such as Feynman diagrams in a vector format. These are much nicer than the shape tool on Word.So yeah, use LaTeX! You can also write out the awesome equations you learn on Quora!
Is being a singer hard?
Watch the movie "walk the line" and you'll get a glimpse of what being a singer is like. It can actually be really hard. Just as an FYI, the difficulty varies from person to person. You'll get people like Justin Beiber who needs a psychologist and people who can basically live on the stage and are just fine.
How do you figure out the percentage of two numbers on a calculator?
Percentage comes from Latin and means “part of a hundred”. I teach my students how to tackle problems like this by setting up a ratio and labeling all parts. (A ratio is the equality of two similar fractions, with a very valuable characteristic. The top or numerator of the 1st fraction times the bottom or denominator of the 2nd will always equal the product of the 2nd numerator and the 1st denominator.Let’s say our two numbers are 15 and 60, and we want to know what percent 15 is of 60.Set up your two fractions with labels to make sure each number goes precisely where it belongs.In this example, my “whole” amounts are 60 from the given information, and 100 is ALWAYS the “whole” number when we’re discussing percentages.My “parts” will be the given 15 and the unknown percentage I seek.The unknown that I’m seeking is “x”, the percentage of 100 that 15 represents relative to 60.When I “cross-multiply” my ratio fractions I get 1500. Dividing by 60 yields 25.So 15 is 25% of 100, which could also be expressed as 1/4 of 100.Once the ratio is set up, I counsel my students to:Multiply the two “corners” you have (in our example, 15 and 100) and then divide by the “lonely” corner. (in this case, 60, because his corner-mate is the unknown “x”)