LaTeX is typesetting language that can be used to make fancy formulas look beautiful. LaTeX is also a
Turing complete programming language that can be used to do just about anything you want it to!
I intend for this class to be mostly exercise driven; I will give out one or more exercises each lecture, teach you a few of the basic concepts or point you to useful resources, and spend the rest of the time helping you do the exercises.
In the first class, I will teach you the basics of LaTeX. The exercise sheet will have exercises of all levels, from easy to diabolical (so all experience levels are welcome).
The topics of the remaining four weeks will vary, and requests are welcome. Do you want to know how to make pretty bibliographies? Draw pretty pictures in LaTeX? Make LaTeX do your math homework for you? Have LaTeX typeset as many lines of Pascal's Triangle as you tell it to? Write your own package (so you can \usepackage{my-package})? Write a replacement for the article document class, so that LaTeX makes your pages look however you want them to? Get LaTeX to do things that it was never meant to do (like search the Internet for you, or become your favorite programming language (albeit slower))? I can help you figure out how to do all of these things, and more, if you attend my class! Come learn just how powerful LaTeX is!
Computers will be provided.
Prerequisites
You should have tried to install LaTeX on your computer by the first class, and have it installed by the second ( http://www.tug.org/protext/ for Windows, http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/ for Mac, and http://www.tug.org/texlive/ with http://kile.sourceforge.net/ for Unix; if you need help, email me at M3343-teachers@esp.mit.edu).
You should have created and attempted to typeset at least one document (which must contain at least one character of text) by the first class, and done so successfully by the second class (http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf will help if you've never done this before, and so will I if you email me).
You must be willing to work hard and discover things for yourself. I'll be there to help you if you get stuck, and point out what help files will teach you how to do what you want to do, but I'll expect you to read the help files, and discover how the command you want works, for yourself.