This section covers dynamic programming, which is a method to solve dynamic optimization problems in discrete time. The key concepts of dynamic programming are introduced in a simple, deterministic consumption-saving problem. Then randomness is introduced into the consumption-saving problem, and the stochastic problem is solved with dynamic programming. As a further application, a Real Business-Cycle model is solved with dynamic programming. Finally, we discuss how to solve general problems with dynamic programming.
This section also shows that optimizing via dynamic programming yields the same results as optimizing via the Lagrangian approach. There is a certain obsession with dynamic programming in macroeconomics, but sometimes you will find that it is easier and more intuitive to use the Lagrangian method.
Optimal control#
This section studies optimal control, which is a method to solve dynamic optimization problems in continuous time. We start by formulating the consumption-saving problem in continuous time. The continuous-time problem is solved first with a present-value Hamiltonian, then with a current-value Hamiltonian. (Both approaches are equivalent.) Then we discuss the optimality conditions for general optimization problems solved by optimal control. We also establish the connection between these optimality conditions and the optimality conditions obtained via dynamic programming. To conclude, we derive and discuss the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation.
Differential equations#
This third section introduces differential equations, which are used to describe continuous-time dynamical systems. We first solve linear first-order differential equations. We then move to linear systems of first-order differential equations. Next, we show how to derive the properties of a linear system of first-order differential equations by drawing its phase diagram. Finally, we turn to nonlinear systems of first-order differential equations—which are common in macroeconomics. Although such system cannot be solved explicitly, its properties can be characterized by constructing its phase diagram.
Conclusion#
To conclude, a little more practice and an application. The problem set below brings together all the material from the course. And the paper below applies the course’s techniques to analyze the New Keynesian model in normal times and at the zero lower bound. Outside of growth theory, optimal control and differential equations are not used very much. Yet they are powerful tools to obtain theoretical results not only in long-run macroeconomics but also in short-run macroeconomics. For instance, as the paper shows, you can use them to analyze the New Keynesian model. It is easy to set up the model in continuous time, solve the household’s problem with optimal control, and study the model’s properties in normal times and at the zero lower bound using phase diagrams. The analysis is short and simple, and it offers many insights that are difficult to obtain in discrete time. For instance, with the phase diagrams, it is easy to understand where the anomalies of the New Keynesian model at the zero lower bound come from—the collapse of output and inflation collapse to implausibly low levels, and the implausibly large effects of government spending and forward guidance. It is also easy to understand how to resolve these anomalies.
diff --git a/public/c4/index.html b/public/c4/index.html
index 1dcd7833a..93cad0f4b 100644
--- a/public/c4/index.html
+++ b/public/c4/index.html
@@ -203,187 +203,134 @@
This course explores core topics in macroeconomics, including national statistics, consumption and saving, unemployment, inflation, business cycles, monetary and fiscal policy, economic growth, and population dynamics. The course discusses short-run and long-run economic fluctuations in the United States and abroad. It also presents models describing such fluctuations: the IS-LM model of business cycles, the matching model of unemployment, models of inflation, the Malthusian model of pre-industrial growth, and the Solowian model of modern growth.
Introductory slides#
-- Overview of macroeconomics
-
+- Overview of macroeconomics
Introductory reference#
-- Akerlof (2002)
- – This essay discusses macroeconomic models and their assumptions, and it isolates six macroeconomic phenomena that macroeconomic models should be able to explain.
+- Akerlof (2002) – This essay discusses macroeconomic models and their assumptions, and it isolates six macroeconomic phenomena that macroeconomic models should be able to explain.
Macroeconomic concepts#
This section introduces key macroeconomic concepts: gross domestic product (GDP), inflation, and unemployment.
Lecture slides#
-- The world
-
-- Defining GDP
-
-- GDP over time
-
-- Composition of GDP
-
-- Inflation
-
-- Unemployment
-
+- The world
+- Defining GDP
+- GDP over time
+- Composition of GDP
+- Inflation
+- Unemployment
References#
-- Kuznets (1934)
- – This report produces the first estimates of GDP in the United States.
-- Kuznets (1952)
- – This paper measures GDP in the United States between 1869 and 1948.
+- Kuznets (1934) – This report produces the first estimates of GDP in the United States.
+- Kuznets (1952) – This paper measures GDP in the United States between 1869 and 1948.
Homework#
IS-LM model of business cycles#
This section presents the IS-LM model. Its goal is to explain the fluctuations of GDP observed over the business cycle. The model is also useful to understand the effects of monetary and fiscal policy.
Lecture slides#
-- Expenditure function
-
-- IS submodel
-
-- LM submodel
-
-- OMO, ZLB, and money multiplier
-
-- IS and LM curves
-
-- Recessions
-
-- Monetary and fiscal policy
-
+- Expenditure function
+- IS submodel
+- LM submodel
+- OMO, ZLB, and money multiplier
+- IS and LM curves
+- Recessions
+- Monetary and fiscal policy
References#
-- Hicks (1937)
- – This paper builds the IS-LM model from Keynes’s General Theory.
-- Krugman (2018)
- – This essay argues that the IS-LM is still good enough for policy work.
+- Hicks (1937) – This paper builds the IS-LM model from Keynes’s General Theory.
+- Krugman (2018) – This essay argues that the IS-LM is still good enough for policy work.
Homework#
Matching model of unemployment#
The IS-LM model does not feature unemployment, which is problematic because high unemployment is the most costly consequence of recessions. To explain the existence of unemployment and the fluctuations of unemployment over the business cycle, this section develops a matching model of unemployment.
Lecture slides#
-- Matching function
-
-- Labor supply
-
-- Labor demand
-
-- Wages
-
-- Equilibrium of the matching model
-
-- Labor-market policies
-
-- Unemployment types
-
+- Matching function
+- Labor supply
+- Labor demand
+- Wages
+- Equilibrium of the matching model
+- Labor-market policies
+- Unemployment types
References#
-- Michaillat (2012)
- – This paper shows how to introduce job rationing into a matching model of unemployment. It also shows that a mild amount of wage rigidity is sufficient to generate realistic fluctuations in unemployment over the business cycle.
-- Landais, Michaillat, Saez (2018)
- – This paper develops a static matching model of unemployment. It represents its equilibrium with labor demand and supply curves in an employment-tightness plane.
+- Michaillat (2012) – This paper shows how to introduce job rationing into a matching model of unemployment. It also shows that a mild amount of wage rigidity is sufficient to generate realistic fluctuations in unemployment over the business cycle.
+- Landais, Michaillat, Saez (2018) – This paper develops a static matching model of unemployment. It represents its equilibrium with labor demand and supply curves in an employment-tightness plane.
Homework#
Models of inflation#
This section introduces the Phillips curve and discusses fluctuations in inflation over the business cycle. It also briefly presents the quantity theory of inflation and discusses episodes of hyperinflation.
Lecture slides#
-- Phillips curve and quantity theory
-
+- Phillips curve and quantity theory
References#
-- Phillips (1958)
- – This paper discovers a negative relation between unemployment and wage inflation in the United Kingdom.
-- Samuelson, Solow (1960)
- – This paper discovers a negative relation between unemployment and price inflation in the United States. (It also finds a negative relation between unemployment and wage inflation in the United States.)
+- Phillips (1958) – This paper discovers a negative relation between unemployment and wage inflation in the United Kingdom.
+- Samuelson, Solow (1960) – This paper discovers a negative relation between unemployment and price inflation in the United States. (It also finds a negative relation between unemployment and wage inflation in the United States.)
Homework#
Malthusian model of growth#
Moving away from short-run, business-cycle fluctuations, this section turns to long-run macroeconomic fluctuations. It describes long-run fluctuations in the pre-industrial period using the Malthusian model of growth.
Lecture slides#
-- Overview of the Malthusian model
-
-- Population
-
-- Output per worker in the Malthusian model
-
+- Overview of the Malthusian model
+- Population
+- Output per worker in the Malthusian model
Reference#
-- Ashraf, Galor (2011)
- – This paper describes fluctuations in population and output per worker in the pre-industrial era. It then develops the Malthusian model of growth to explain these observations.
+- Ashraf, Galor (2011) – This paper describes fluctuations in population and output per worker in the pre-industrial era. It then develops the Malthusian model of growth to explain these observations.
Homework#
Solowian model of growth#
This final section describes long-run fluctuations in the modern, industrial era using the Solowian model of growth.
Lecture slides#
-- Production and saving
-
-- Output per worker in the Solowian model
-
-- Golden rule
-
-- Technological progress
-
-- Balanced growth
-
+- Production and saving
+- Output per worker in the Solowian model
+- Golden rule
+- Technological progress
+- Balanced growth
Reference#
-- Solow (1956)
- – This paper develops the basic Solowian model of growth.
-- Solow (1957)
- – This paper adds technical progress to the Solowian model of growth.
+- Solow (1956) – This paper develops the basic Solowian model of growth.
+- Solow (1957) – This paper adds technical progress to the Solowian model of growth.
Homework#
diff --git a/public/c5/index.html b/public/c5/index.html
index 9066ab9ba..4ed0d0593 100644
--- a/public/c5/index.html
+++ b/public/c5/index.html
@@ -204,12 +204,9 @@
Accounting for business cycles#
This first section reviews basic facts about business cycles. It decomposes business-cycle fluctuations into two components: fluctuations in productive capacity, and fluctuations in capacity utilization. It finds that the vast majority of business-cycle fluctuations are caused by fluctuations in capacity utilization—or equivalently fluctuations in slack. It also shows that such fluctuations in slack impose large welfare costs, due to the large non-monetary costs of unemployment.
Slackish business-cycle model: static version#
@@ -217,22 +214,17 @@ Slackish business-cycle mo
Wealth enters the utility function. People derive direct utility from wealth, maybe because wealth is a marker of social status, and people value high social status. Thanks to this assumption, and although the model is static, the aggregate demand is nondegenerate.
The matching model requires to specify price norms. Theoretically, there are many possibilities. Evidence from microdata and ethnographic surveys suggests that prices and wages are not fully flexible but instead somewhat rigid. The section shows how such rigid pricing norms can be inserted into the model. Then the section derives comparative statics in response to aggregate demand and aggregate supply shocks under fixed prices and rigid prices.
Slackish business-cycle model: dynamic version#
This section presents a dynamic version of the slackish business-cycle model. In the dynamic model, unemployment is determined by the intersection of an aggregate demand curve, stemming from households’ Euler equation, and an aggregate supply curve, corresponding to the Beveridge curve.
An advantage of moving to a dynamic environment is that interest rates appear into the model. Indeed, the real interest rate is a key determinant of aggregate demand. By setting a nominal interest rate, the central bank can stabilize the economy. The model is therefore useful to study the effect of monetary policy on unemployment—for instance to assess the possibility of a soft landing in the aftermath of the pandemic inflation spike.
Taming business cycles with monetary and fiscal policy#
@@ -241,14 +233,10 @@ Taming business
Since the US unemployment rate is always inefficiently high in slumps, and sometimes inefficiently low in booms, monetary policy has scope to stabilize the unemployment rate better. The section therefore describes optimal monetary policy over the business cycle. Monetary policy influences the aggregate demand curve, so it can be used to shrink the unemployment gap. The optimal monetary policy is to adjust interest rates to eliminate the unemployment gap entirely. So the central bank should lower rates in bad times, when unemployment is inefficiently high, and raise rates in good times, when unemployment is inefficiently low.
Once monetary policy reaches the zero lower bound, however, it becomes impotent, and it has to be supplemented by fiscal policy. The section finally studies how government spending should be adjusted when unemployment is inefficient. It shows that that optimal government spending deviates from the Samuelson rule to reduce, but not eliminate, the unemployment gap.
diff --git a/public/d1/index.html b/public/d1/index.html
index b03658c96..81f05f91b 100644
--- a/public/d1/index.html
+++ b/public/d1/index.html
@@ -62,8 +62,8 @@
"keywords": [
],
- "articleBody": "The template produces an academic presentation using LaTeX with the Beamer class . The presentation adheres to typographical best practices and has a minimalist design. The template is particularly well suited for research presentations. It is designed to convey scientific arguments and results effectively.\nView LaTeX template for academic presentations Research presentation produced by the template Features The aspect ratio is 4:3. There are no frills at the periphery of the slides. The font for text, roman math, and numbers is Source Sans Pro. The font for monospaced text (including URLs) is Source Code Pro. The font for Greek and calligraphic math is Euler. The font for blackboard bold is Fourier. The font for mathematical symbols is MnSymbol. No colors are used in the text (only grayscale) to reduce distraction; colors are reserved for figures and text alerts. Margins, spacing, and font size are set for comfortable reading. Formatting is specified for theorems, propositions, lemmas, definitions, assumptions, corollaries, and remarks. Formatting is specified for figures and tables. Section slides and final slide can easily be inserted into the presentation. 4:3 versus 16:9 aspect ratio There has been a shift from slides with a 4:3 aspect ratio to wider slides with a 16:9 aspect ratio. This template sticks to the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio.\nFirst, 4:3 slides are better at effectively presenting supporting information. And slides are here as support, not as a substitute, for what the speaker is talking about. 4:3 slides force presenters to display only essential information on slides—leading to more effective presentations. 16:9 slides are often used to present two graphs at a time, or two paragraphs at a time, or a graph with some side text. This is confusing and possibly distracting for listeners, who do not know what to look at, and may be looking at the wrong part of the slide. 4:3 slides can only display one graph or one paragraph at a time—focusing the attention of the audience on that one piece of information.\nSecond, lines of text on 16:9 slides are often excessively long. The lines cannot be read at one glance, so reading them distracts from the presentation.\nThird, 4:3 slides are more robust. They are easily readable will all projectors, both new and old. By contrast, the text of 16:9 slides becomes very small when they are displayed on old 4:3 projectors.\nFourth, 4:3 slides work better on tablets because most tablets have a 4:3 aspect ratio (iPads for instance). It has becomes very common to read or display slides on tablets, or watch online presentation on tablets. In that context, 4:3 slides display better.\nSometimes, however, host institutions or conferences require presenters to use 16:9 aspect ratio. The template can be adjusted to produce such slides. Just add the aspectratio=169 option to the \\documentclass command. Specifically, to produce a 16:9 presentation, the first line of presentation.tex should be:\n\\documentclass[11pt,aspectratio=169,xcolor={dvipsnames},hyperref={pdftex,pdfpagemode=UseNone,hidelinks,pdfdisplaydoctitle=true},usepdftitle=false]{beamer} Text font Fonts matter in presentations—just as in papers. The font determines the appearance and readability of the entire presentation. For the presentation’s text, the template uses Source Sans Pro , which is one of the free fonts recommended by Matthew Butterick .\nSource Sans Pro is a sans-serif font. This is an important feature, as sans-serif fonts are more readable than fonts with serif in presentations. Another advantage of Source Sans Pro is that it is not part of typical slide templates (unlike Fira Sans for instance), so it feels new and fresh. And since Source Sans Pro was designed in the last decade, it also feels modern.\nMoreover, the Source Pro family includes a nice monospaced font: Source Code Pro . The template uses Source Code Pro as monospaced font—giving the monospaced text and regular text a similar look. The monospaced font is used in particular to typeset URLs.\nAnother advantage of Source Sans Pro is that it comes with a broad range of weight. For instance, the template uses the semibold font weight in places. To activate the semibold font instead of the usual bold font, use \\sbseries and \\textsb{} instead of \\bfseries and \\textbf{}.\nA last advantage of Source Sans Pro is that there is a with-serif font in the Source Pro family: Source Serif Pro . This paper template uses Source Serif Pro, which gives the presentations and papers produced by the two templates a similar look.\nMath fonts LaTeX uses one font for text and other fonts for math. For consistency, the template sticks with Source Sans Pro for roman math . It also uses Source Sans Pro for all the digits in math and basic punctuation (such as ., ?, %, ;, and ,), so very basic mathematical expressions look the same in math and text. For example, the commands 3.5\\% and $3.5\\%$ produce the same results.\nGreek letters There are some sans-serif Greek alphabets, but the letters look unusual and are hard to recognize. So for the Greek letters in math, the template uses the Euler font . These Greek letters look good, have the same thickness and height as the text letters, and are distinctive. For consistency, neither uppercase nor lowercase Greek letters are italicized.\nAll the standard Greek letters are available. A few variants are available as well: \\varepsilon, \\varpi, \\varphi, and \\vartheta. The variants \\varrho, \\varsigma, and \\varkappa are not available with the Euler font.\nCalligraphic letters The template also uses the Euler font for calligraphic letters in math. These calligraphic letters fit well with the other fonts and are very readable. The calligraphic letters are produced with the \\mathcal{} command.\nBlackboard-bold letters The template uses the Fourier font as blackboard-bold font. It is cleaner than the default blackboard-bold font as it does not have serif. And it is slightly thicker than the default font so it matches well with Source Sans Pro and the Euler letters. The blackboard-bold letters are produced with the \\mathbb{} command.\nBold characters In the template, it is possible to bold any mathematical character (except blackboard-bold letters). This can be done using the \\bm{} command in math.\nMathematical symbols Finally, the template use the MnSymbol font for the symbols used in math mode. The default Computer Modern symbols are too light and thin in comparison to the Source Sans Pro and Euler letters, and as a result do not mix well with them. The advantage of the MnSymbol font is that its symbols are thicker, so they mix better with the letters. The symbols are also less curly, which gives them a more modern feel.1\nFont size The font size is 11pt. It is easily readable but not too big. It follows Butterick’s advice to choose a font size so as to be able to fit about 12 lines of text on one slide.\nThe template keeps one font size for all text. So the text is not smaller at different levels of itemized lists—which many Beamer themes impose by default but which is both distracting and clunky.\nLine spacing The line spacing is 150% of the point size. This adds white space to the presentation, which helps with reading, and it limits the amount of stuff that can be written on one slide. There is a small amount of additional vertical spacing between items in lists to separate the items better.\nText margins The information on the title slide, section titles, frame titles, and regular text are all aligned along the same left margin. (This requires various adjustments as these elements are not usually aligned in Beamer themes.) Lists are slightly indented to the right.\nColor scheme As Butterick says , color should be used with restraint. A lot of colors, especially bright ones, is distracting. To reduce distraction, the template only uses grayscale. The text is in dark gray (85% black), not complete black, to avoid an uncomfortable degree of contrast. The list items—bullet points and numbers—are in lighter gray, to blend in the background.2 Colors are reserved for figures and text alerts.\nThe typical, bright Beamer bullet points, headers, and footers, should be avoided as they are distracting.\nNo frills at the periphery A typical slide produced with Beamer might includes the following elements:\nOutline of the talk above the title Small navigation buttons in the bottom right-hand corner Names of the authors and title of the talk at the bottom of the slide Such clutter distracts listeners and takes their attention away from the main message of the slide—while conveying no useful information. The audience does not need that information in the middle of the talk. The slides produced by the template are devoid of such frills.\nIn particular, the pesky navigation buttons are eliminated by placing \\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{} in presentation.sty.\nSlide numbers By default the slides are not numbered. This seems better for most presentations. Displaying slide numbers does nothing but makes the audience jittery at the thought of the sheer number of slides that remain to be covered in the talk.\nBut for anyone who wants to share the slide deck for comments, or who gives a presentation specifically to collect feedback, it might be helpful to have slides numbers—so the comments can be precisely linked to a slide. To introduce page numbers on slide, just uncomment the line \\setbeamertemplate{footline}[frame number] in presentation.sty.\nOnce slide numbers are inserted at the bottom of all slides, it is possible to remove the slide number from the title slide. To do that, use \\frame[plain]{\\titlepage} instead of \\frame{\\titlepage} in presentation.tex. The page numbers will start appearing on the second slide.\nTitle slide The title slide avoids centered text and is otherwise pretty minimalist. The title is in large font (21pt), in small caps, and accentuated by a black line. Authors and dates are in slightly larger font than the text (12pt). The title slide also includes the permanent URL of the paper being presented. When the presentation is posted online, the URL allows readers to go from the presentation directly to the paper. The URL is displayed in small font (9pt) and gray so is not too obtrusive.\nTo specify the presentation authors, use the command \\information{First Author, Second Author}. To add the location of the presentation or a date to the title page, add a second argument to the command: \\information{First Author, Second Author}{Location -- Date}. The command takes an optional argument to specify the paper URL: \\information[URL]{First Author, Second Author}{Location -- Date}. Slide headline The headline is in somewhat larger font than the text (14pt), in small caps, and aligned left. This follows Butterick’s recommendation to avoid centered headlines. The headline stands out, is easily readable, but does not take all the attention away from the text.\nThe headline is set against the same white background as the text—not against a bright color background. This choice makes the headline easier to read and less distracting.\nAlerts The template comes with a set of predefined alert commands:\nStandard alert: \\al{text} colors the text in magenta. \\al[n]{text} colors the text in magenta on nth click. Green alerts (for instance to indicate a positive number): \\alg{text} colors the text in green. \\alg[n]{text} colors the text in green on nth click. Red alerts (for instance to indicate a negative number): \\alr{text} colors the text in red. \\alr[n]{text} colors the text in red on nth click. Blue alerts (for instance to indicate a zero): \\alb{text} colors the text in blue. \\alb[n]{text} colors the text in blue on nth click. The standard alert is set in magenta, which is a color that stands out but unlike red does not induce anger. Apparently :\nA color that, for centuries, has captivated many, magenta is a mixture of violet and red. Magenta is known as a color of harmony and balance. It’s used in Feng Shui and is often considered spiritual.\nOf course alerts should be used with restraint.\nTheorems and other results As is standard, the text of theorems is in italic—providing subtle emphasis. The theorem label is in semibold—again providing subtle emphasis. To further emphasize theorems and clearly separate them from surrounding text, the template places theorems in a light gray rectangle with rounded corners.\nFor consistency, propositions, lemmas, assumptions, definitions, and so on, are formatted just like theorems. The template comes with the following predefined environments:\nTheorems: \\begin{theorem} ... \\end{theorem} Propositions: \\begin{proposition} ... \\end{proposition} Lemmas: \\begin{lemma} ... \\end{lemma} Corollaries: \\begin{corollary} ... \\end{corollary} Definitions: \\begin{definition} ... \\end{definition} Assumptions: \\begin{assumption} ... \\end{assumption} Remarks: \\begin{remark} ... \\end{remark} Figures An advantage of avoiding colors in the text is that colors in figures stand out.\nThe template uses a white background for slides because figures have white backgrounds. Figures therefore seamlessly blend into the slide. With a colorful slide background, the figures background would stick out.\nFigures are centered by default.\nThe template is designed so the slide headline is used to caption the figure. It is not designed to accommodate a separate caption below the figure.\nAn easy way to insert figures into the template is to create a PDF file with all the figures that are featured in the presentation. To do that, create a Keynote or Powerpoint presentation; insert each figure as a slide background; and save the resulting presentation as PDF. With this method, all the figures have the exact same size. It is also possible to use Keynote or Powerpoint to annotate the figures created with an external software (Matlab, R, Python). The file figures.pdf in the repository was created from MATLAB graphs by this method.\nThe code for a slide with a basic figure is the following:\n\\begin{frame} \\frametitle{Figure caption} \\includegraphics[scale=0.3]{figure.pdf} \\end{frame} The code for a slide with multiple figures displayed sequentially is the following:\n\\begin{frame} \\frametitle{Figure caption} \\includegraphics\u003c1\u003e[scale=0.3,page=1]{figures.pdf}% \\includegraphics\u003c2\u003e[scale=0.3,page=2]{figures.pdf}% \\includegraphics\u003c3\u003e[scale=0.3,page=3]{figures.pdf}% \\includegraphics\u003c4\u003e[scale=0.3,page=4]{figures.pdf}% \\end{frame} Tables People sometimes copy-paste tables from their papers into their slides. That’s not a good idea since it is not possible to read large tables with tiny numbers on slides. It seems more effective to keep the same font size in tables as in the text, and just present in the slide tables the key numbers from the paper tables. If listeners want more details, they will go to the paper.\nTables are centered by default, and fill the slide.\nHere too, the template is designed so the slide headline is used to caption the table. It is not designed to accommodate a separate caption below the table.\nThe code for a slide with a basic table is the following:\n\\begin{frame} \\frametitle{Table caption} \\begin{tabular*}{\\textwidth}{@{\\extracolsep\\fill}lccc} \\toprule \u0026 Column 1 \u0026 Column 2 \u0026 Column 3\\\\ \\midrule Line 1 \u0026 A \u0026 B \u0026 C \\\\ Line 2 \u0026 D \u0026 E \u0026 F \\\\ Line 3 \u0026 G \u0026 H \u0026 I \\\\ \\midrule Line 4 \u0026 J \u0026 K \u0026 L \\\\ Line 5 \u0026 M \u0026 N \u0026 O \\\\ \\bottomrule \\end{tabular*} \\end{frame} Section slide The template has a command to divide the presentation into sections, which adds structure to longer talks. To produces the section slide, just use the following code:\n\\begin{frame} \\heading{Section title} \\end{frame} The text on the section slide is in small caps, and with moderately large font (17pt).\nThis section slide is a good point to stop, recap what has already been showed, and discuss what comes ahead. It is also a good point to take questions.\nPictograms The template comes with a set of shortcuts to display common pictograms in text mode:\n\\then gives $\\rightsquigarrow$ \\so gives $\\Rightarrow$ \\up gives ↑ \\down gives ↓ \\flat gives → Navigation buttons The template comes with navigation buttons. The buttons have white background, just like the slides. The button text is in light gray and small font (9pt). The buttons blend in the slides, unlike the typical, bright Beamer buttons that stand out and distract from the rest of the content.\nNavigation buttons should be used with restraint as hopping from slide to slide with buttons disrupts the flow of the presentation. But buttons are sometimes helpful to go to key backup material.\nHere is how to point a button to a specific slide:\nAdd a label at the top of the specific slide: \\begin{frame}[label=specificSlide]. Create a button in another slide that points to the labelled slide: \\hyperlink{specificSlide}{\\beamergotobutton{Go to specific slide}}. Slide breaks Each slide should be prepared and planned carefully. There should be a reason why material is on a certain slide rather than on another slide. Nevertheless, sometimes, a slide contains too much material to fit on one slide, and it does not matter too much how the material is split across successive slides. One example is a slide with a long list of references. Another example is a slide with a long mathematical derivation. In these cases, the option allowframebreaks can be used to split slides automatically, using the following code:\n\\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks] \\frametitle{Slide title} Long list of references or long derivation. \\end{frame} Each successive slide is automatically numbered with an Arabic number in square brackets: [1], [2], [3], and so on. As the Beamer user guide notes, however, the allowframebreaks option invites the creation of endless presentations that resemble more a paper projected on the wall than a presentation. So the option should only be used sporadically, in the specific cases mentioned above.\nLast slide The template also come with a last slide, which is a just a gray square, and which is called with the command \\lastslide. The last slide can be used instead of conclusion slides—to say thank you, to recap what the presentation showed, and to discuss next steps or related projects.\nConclusion slides are generally ineffective and even mildly upsetting. The audience has been listening for an hour or an hour and a half. They know what they have just been told. At that point they are happy to go on with their day without having to hear again a summary of the same material.\nThe MnSymbol package is incompatible with the amssymb package. So it is not possible to load amssymb with the template. Neither should it be required since MnSymbol provides a vast collection of symbols. ↩︎\nThe template customizes formatting for three levels of itemized and numbered lists. More deeply nested lists should be avoided as they are a sign that the presentation’s organization is too messy. ↩︎\n",
- "wordCount" : "3018",
+ "articleBody": "The template produces an academic presentation using LaTeX with the Beamer class. The presentation adheres to typographical best practices and has a minimalist design. The template is particularly well suited for research presentations. It is designed to convey scientific arguments and results effectively.\nView LaTeX template for academic presentations Research presentation produced by the template Features The aspect ratio is 4:3. There are no frills at the periphery of the slides. The font for text, roman math, and numbers is Source Sans Pro. The font for monospaced text (including URLs) is Source Code Pro. The font for Greek and calligraphic math is Euler. The font for blackboard bold is Fourier. The font for mathematical symbols is MnSymbol. No colors are used in the text (only grayscale) to reduce distraction; colors are reserved for figures and text alerts. Margins, spacing, and font size are set for comfortable reading. Formatting is specified for theorems, propositions, lemmas, definitions, assumptions, corollaries, and remarks. Formatting is specified for figures and tables. Section slides and final slide can easily be inserted into the presentation. 4:3 versus 16:9 aspect ratio There has been a shift from slides with a 4:3 aspect ratio to wider slides with a 16:9 aspect ratio. This template sticks to the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio.\nFirst, 4:3 slides are better at effectively presenting supporting information. And slides are here as support, not as a substitute, for what the speaker is talking about. 4:3 slides force presenters to display only essential information on slides—leading to more effective presentations. 16:9 slides are often used to present two graphs at a time, or two paragraphs at a time, or a graph with some side text. This is confusing and possibly distracting for listeners, who do not know what to look at, and may be looking at the wrong part of the slide. 4:3 slides can only display one graph or one paragraph at a time—focusing the attention of the audience on that one piece of information.\nSecond, lines of text on 16:9 slides are often excessively long. The lines cannot be read at one glance, so reading them distracts from the presentation.\nThird, 4:3 slides are more robust. They are easily readable will all projectors, both new and old. By contrast, the text of 16:9 slides becomes very small when they are displayed on old 4:3 projectors.\nFourth, 4:3 slides work better on tablets because most tablets have a 4:3 aspect ratio (iPads for instance). It has becomes very common to read or display slides on tablets, or watch online presentation on tablets. In that context, 4:3 slides display better.\nSometimes, however, host institutions or conferences require presenters to use 16:9 aspect ratio. The template can be adjusted to produce such slides. Just add the aspectratio=169 option to the \\documentclass command. Specifically, to produce a 16:9 presentation, the first line of presentation.tex should be:\n\\documentclass[11pt,aspectratio=169,xcolor={dvipsnames},hyperref={pdftex,pdfpagemode=UseNone,hidelinks,pdfdisplaydoctitle=true},usepdftitle=false]{beamer} Text font Fonts matter in presentations—just as in papers. The font determines the appearance and readability of the entire presentation. For the presentation’s text, the template uses Source Sans Pro, which is one of the free fonts recommended by Matthew Butterick.\nSource Sans Pro is a sans-serif font. This is an important feature, as sans-serif fonts are more readable than fonts with serif in presentations. Another advantage of Source Sans Pro is that it is not part of typical slide templates (unlike Fira Sans for instance), so it feels new and fresh. And since Source Sans Pro was designed in the last decade, it also feels modern.\nMoreover, the Source Pro family includes a nice monospaced font: Source Code Pro. The template uses Source Code Pro as monospaced font—giving the monospaced text and regular text a similar look. The monospaced font is used in particular to typeset URLs.\nAnother advantage of Source Sans Pro is that it comes with a broad range of weight. For instance, the template uses the semibold font weight in places. To activate the semibold font instead of the usual bold font, use \\sbseries and \\textsb{} instead of \\bfseries and \\textbf{}.\nA last advantage of Source Sans Pro is that there is a with-serif font in the Source Pro family: Source Serif Pro. This paper template uses Source Serif Pro, which gives the presentations and papers produced by the two templates a similar look.\nMath fonts LaTeX uses one font for text and other fonts for math. For consistency, the template sticks with Source Sans Pro for roman math. It also uses Source Sans Pro for all the digits in math and basic punctuation (such as ., ?, %, ;, and ,), so very basic mathematical expressions look the same in math and text. For example, the commands 3.5\\% and $3.5\\%$ produce the same results.\nGreek letters There are some sans-serif Greek alphabets, but the letters look unusual and are hard to recognize. So for the Greek letters in math, the template uses the Euler font. These Greek letters look good, have the same thickness and height as the text letters, and are distinctive. For consistency, neither uppercase nor lowercase Greek letters are italicized.\nAll the standard Greek letters are available. A few variants are available as well: \\varepsilon, \\varpi, \\varphi, and \\vartheta. The variants \\varrho, \\varsigma, and \\varkappa are not available with the Euler font.\nCalligraphic letters The template also uses the Euler font for calligraphic letters in math. These calligraphic letters fit well with the other fonts and are very readable. The calligraphic letters are produced with the \\mathcal{} command.\nBlackboard-bold letters The template uses the Fourier font as blackboard-bold font. It is cleaner than the default blackboard-bold font as it does not have serif. And it is slightly thicker than the default font so it matches well with Source Sans Pro and the Euler letters. The blackboard-bold letters are produced with the \\mathbb{} command.\nBold characters In the template, it is possible to bold any mathematical character (except blackboard-bold letters). This can be done using the \\bm{} command in math.\nMathematical symbols Finally, the template use the MnSymbol font for the symbols used in math mode. The default Computer Modern symbols are too light and thin in comparison to the Source Sans Pro and Euler letters, and as a result do not mix well with them. The advantage of the MnSymbol font is that its symbols are thicker, so they mix better with the letters. The symbols are also less curly, which gives them a more modern feel.1\nFont size The font size is 11pt. It is easily readable but not too big. It follows Butterick’s advice to choose a font size so as to be able to fit about 12 lines of text on one slide.\nThe template keeps one font size for all text. So the text is not smaller at different levels of itemized lists—which many Beamer themes impose by default but which is both distracting and clunky.\nLine spacing The line spacing is 150% of the point size. This adds white space to the presentation, which helps with reading, and it limits the amount of stuff that can be written on one slide. There is a small amount of additional vertical spacing between items in lists to separate the items better.\nText margins The information on the title slide, section titles, frame titles, and regular text are all aligned along the same left margin. (This requires various adjustments as these elements are not usually aligned in Beamer themes.) Lists are slightly indented to the right.\nColor scheme As Butterick says, color should be used with restraint. A lot of colors, especially bright ones, is distracting. To reduce distraction, the template only uses grayscale. The text is in dark gray (85% black), not complete black, to avoid an uncomfortable degree of contrast. The list items—bullet points and numbers—are in lighter gray, to blend in the background.2 Colors are reserved for figures and text alerts.\nThe typical, bright Beamer bullet points, headers, and footers, should be avoided as they are distracting.\nNo frills at the periphery A typical slide produced with Beamer might includes the following elements:\nOutline of the talk above the title Small navigation buttons in the bottom right-hand corner Names of the authors and title of the talk at the bottom of the slide Such clutter distracts listeners and takes their attention away from the main message of the slide—while conveying no useful information. The audience does not need that information in the middle of the talk. The slides produced by the template are devoid of such frills.\nIn particular, the pesky navigation buttons are eliminated by placing \\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{} in presentation.sty.\nSlide numbers By default the slides are not numbered. This seems better for most presentations. Displaying slide numbers does nothing but makes the audience jittery at the thought of the sheer number of slides that remain to be covered in the talk.\nBut for anyone who wants to share the slide deck for comments, or who gives a presentation specifically to collect feedback, it might be helpful to have slides numbers—so the comments can be precisely linked to a slide. To introduce page numbers on slide, just uncomment the line \\setbeamertemplate{footline}[frame number] in presentation.sty.\nOnce slide numbers are inserted at the bottom of all slides, it is possible to remove the slide number from the title slide. To do that, use \\frame[plain]{\\titlepage} instead of \\frame{\\titlepage} in presentation.tex. The page numbers will start appearing on the second slide.\nTitle slide The title slide avoids centered text and is otherwise pretty minimalist. The title is in large font (21pt), in small caps, and accentuated by a black line. Authors and dates are in slightly larger font than the text (12pt). The title slide also includes the permanent URL of the paper being presented. When the presentation is posted online, the URL allows readers to go from the presentation directly to the paper. The URL is displayed in small font (9pt) and gray so is not too obtrusive.\nTo specify the presentation authors, use the command \\information{First Author, Second Author}. To add the location of the presentation or a date to the title page, add a second argument to the command: \\information{First Author, Second Author}{Location -- Date}. The command takes an optional argument to specify the paper URL: \\information[URL]{First Author, Second Author}{Location -- Date}. Slide headline The headline is in somewhat larger font than the text (14pt), in small caps, and aligned left. This follows Butterick’s recommendation to avoid centered headlines. The headline stands out, is easily readable, but does not take all the attention away from the text.\nThe headline is set against the same white background as the text—not against a bright color background. This choice makes the headline easier to read and less distracting.\nAlerts The template comes with a set of predefined alert commands:\nStandard alert: \\al{text} colors the text in magenta. \\al[n]{text} colors the text in magenta on nth click. Green alerts (for instance to indicate a positive number): \\alg{text} colors the text in green. \\alg[n]{text} colors the text in green on nth click. Red alerts (for instance to indicate a negative number): \\alr{text} colors the text in red. \\alr[n]{text} colors the text in red on nth click. Blue alerts (for instance to indicate a zero): \\alb{text} colors the text in blue. \\alb[n]{text} colors the text in blue on nth click. The standard alert is set in magenta, which is a color that stands out but unlike red does not induce anger. Apparently:\nA color that, for centuries, has captivated many, magenta is a mixture of violet and red. Magenta is known as a color of harmony and balance. It’s used in Feng Shui and is often considered spiritual.\nOf course alerts should be used with restraint.\nTheorems and other results As is standard, the text of theorems is in italic—providing subtle emphasis. The theorem label is in semibold—again providing subtle emphasis. To further emphasize theorems and clearly separate them from surrounding text, the template places theorems in a light gray rectangle with rounded corners.\nFor consistency, propositions, lemmas, assumptions, definitions, and so on, are formatted just like theorems. The template comes with the following predefined environments:\nTheorems: \\begin{theorem} ... \\end{theorem} Propositions: \\begin{proposition} ... \\end{proposition} Lemmas: \\begin{lemma} ... \\end{lemma} Corollaries: \\begin{corollary} ... \\end{corollary} Definitions: \\begin{definition} ... \\end{definition} Assumptions: \\begin{assumption} ... \\end{assumption} Remarks: \\begin{remark} ... \\end{remark} Figures An advantage of avoiding colors in the text is that colors in figures stand out.\nThe template uses a white background for slides because figures have white backgrounds. Figures therefore seamlessly blend into the slide. With a colorful slide background, the figures background would stick out.\nFigures are centered by default.\nThe template is designed so the slide headline is used to caption the figure. It is not designed to accommodate a separate caption below the figure.\nAn easy way to insert figures into the template is to create a PDF file with all the figures that are featured in the presentation. To do that, create a Keynote or Powerpoint presentation; insert each figure as a slide background; and save the resulting presentation as PDF. With this method, all the figures have the exact same size. It is also possible to use Keynote or Powerpoint to annotate the figures created with an external software (Matlab, R, Python). The file figures.pdf in the repository was created from MATLAB graphs by this method.\nThe code for a slide with a basic figure is the following:\n\\begin{frame} \\frametitle{Figure caption} \\includegraphics[scale=0.3]{figure.pdf} \\end{frame} The code for a slide with multiple figures displayed sequentially is the following:\n\\begin{frame} \\frametitle{Figure caption} \\includegraphics\u003c1\u003e[scale=0.3,page=1]{figures.pdf}% \\includegraphics\u003c2\u003e[scale=0.3,page=2]{figures.pdf}% \\includegraphics\u003c3\u003e[scale=0.3,page=3]{figures.pdf}% \\includegraphics\u003c4\u003e[scale=0.3,page=4]{figures.pdf}% \\end{frame} Tables People sometimes copy-paste tables from their papers into their slides. That’s not a good idea since it is not possible to read large tables with tiny numbers on slides. It seems more effective to keep the same font size in tables as in the text, and just present in the slide tables the key numbers from the paper tables. If listeners want more details, they will go to the paper.\nTables are centered by default, and fill the slide.\nHere too, the template is designed so the slide headline is used to caption the table. It is not designed to accommodate a separate caption below the table.\nThe code for a slide with a basic table is the following:\n\\begin{frame} \\frametitle{Table caption} \\begin{tabular*}{\\textwidth}{@{\\extracolsep\\fill}lccc} \\toprule \u0026 Column 1 \u0026 Column 2 \u0026 Column 3\\\\ \\midrule Line 1 \u0026 A \u0026 B \u0026 C \\\\ Line 2 \u0026 D \u0026 E \u0026 F \\\\ Line 3 \u0026 G \u0026 H \u0026 I \\\\ \\midrule Line 4 \u0026 J \u0026 K \u0026 L \\\\ Line 5 \u0026 M \u0026 N \u0026 O \\\\ \\bottomrule \\end{tabular*} \\end{frame} Section slide The template has a command to divide the presentation into sections, which adds structure to longer talks. To produces the section slide, just use the following code:\n\\begin{frame} \\heading{Section title} \\end{frame} The text on the section slide is in small caps, and with moderately large font (17pt).\nThis section slide is a good point to stop, recap what has already been showed, and discuss what comes ahead. It is also a good point to take questions.\nPictograms The template comes with a set of shortcuts to display common pictograms in text mode:\n\\then gives $\\rightsquigarrow$ \\so gives $\\Rightarrow$ \\up gives ↑ \\down gives ↓ \\flat gives → Navigation buttons The template comes with navigation buttons. The buttons have white background, just like the slides. The button text is in light gray and small font (9pt). The buttons blend in the slides, unlike the typical, bright Beamer buttons that stand out and distract from the rest of the content.\nNavigation buttons should be used with restraint as hopping from slide to slide with buttons disrupts the flow of the presentation. But buttons are sometimes helpful to go to key backup material.\nHere is how to point a button to a specific slide:\nAdd a label at the top of the specific slide: \\begin{frame}[label=specificSlide]. Create a button in another slide that points to the labelled slide: \\hyperlink{specificSlide}{\\beamergotobutton{Go to specific slide}}. Slide breaks Each slide should be prepared and planned carefully. There should be a reason why material is on a certain slide rather than on another slide. Nevertheless, sometimes, a slide contains too much material to fit on one slide, and it does not matter too much how the material is split across successive slides. One example is a slide with a long list of references. Another example is a slide with a long mathematical derivation. In these cases, the option allowframebreaks can be used to split slides automatically, using the following code:\n\\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks] \\frametitle{Slide title} Long list of references or long derivation. \\end{frame} Each successive slide is automatically numbered with an Arabic number in square brackets: [1], [2], [3], and so on. As the Beamer user guide notes, however, the allowframebreaks option invites the creation of endless presentations that resemble more a paper projected on the wall than a presentation. So the option should only be used sporadically, in the specific cases mentioned above.\nLast slide The template also come with a last slide, which is a just a gray square, and which is called with the command \\lastslide. The last slide can be used instead of conclusion slides—to say thank you, to recap what the presentation showed, and to discuss next steps or related projects.\nConclusion slides are generally ineffective and even mildly upsetting. The audience has been listening for an hour or an hour and a half. They know what they have just been told. At that point they are happy to go on with their day without having to hear again a summary of the same material.\nThe MnSymbol package is incompatible with the amssymb package. So it is not possible to load amssymb with the template. Neither should it be required since MnSymbol provides a vast collection of symbols. ↩︎\nThe template customizes formatting for three levels of itemized and numbered lists. More deeply nested lists should be avoided as they are a sign that the presentation’s organization is too messy. ↩︎\n",
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"image":"https://pascalmichaillat.org/d1s.png","datePublished": "2024-06-28T00:00:00Z",
"dateModified": "2024-07-05T00:00:00Z",
@@ -214,16 +214,12 @@