I use Mathematica to take lecture notes in real time without any major issues (while the proud TeX guys struggle hard to keep up 🙂 ). I have also used it for most math-related homework/assignments I wrote during past two and half years on university.
Before you start, you may want to look at some of these video tutorials.
Also, a few recommendations from me:
- Keyboard shortcuts are the key to type fast. Ctrl+9 for inline math cell, Ctrl+6 for superscript, etc.
- Learn symbol identifiers for the “esc – symbol – esc” notation. “sum” for Sum, “es” for empty set…you can find list of these in the Mathematica documentation. I have encountered only very few symbols I wanted to type that don’t have the esc notation name (for example, leftwards double arrow or double right tee).
- Type all math-related stuff into inline math cells. The math cell will do some of the math related formatting for you – put spaces where they belong, render all variables and symbols in italics, etc.
- Use the preformatted templates found in “New”->”Styled Notebook”.
- Do not use ENTER for breaklines, individual paragraph should go into separate text cells (Ctrl+Shift+D) so Mathematica can break the content into individual pages/slides correctly.
- In-built Mathematica PDF export sucks big-time; I use CutePDF printer for this.
Also, save often and back up often (Dropbox/Syncplicity are the ideal solution), one misplaced keyboard shortcut can turn hundred hours of work worth document into a goulash (trust me, been there) 🙂
Example of lecture notes I took in real-time during lecture (it is in Czech, but that doesn’t matter much).