LaTeX is an essential document-formatting tool for statisticians and many other scientists.
Two of the most important documents that a student will have to prepare are the dissertation, and a presentation of the dissertation results. LaTeX can play an important role in the preparation of both.
The look of a document is determined by its class, the details of which are defined in a class file. Choosing a good class is the first step to creating a satisfying document.
The NCSU Graduate School has very specific guidelines for the preparation of an online dissertation. A page of templates includes a zip archive that provides:
ncsuthesis.cls;YourName-thesis.tex;The class was created by Josh Hykes from Nuclear
Engineering, who also maintains a web page devoted
to LaTeX materials. On Josh's page, you will find a link to a zip
archive containing his most recent version of
ncsuthesis, which is usually the same as the version
on the Graduate School's page, but which at times will contain
recent enhancements.
While no class can be guaranteed to produce a dissertation that meets the Graduate School's guidelines, and the responsibility to do so lies solely with the candidate, you should have little trouble meeting those guidelines if you use this class.
This archive contains another set of sample LaTeX files, set up to use the new class. It does not contain the class file itself--you should obtain the latest version of that from either the Graduate School's page or Josh's page.
The Graduate School website has two examples of Ph.D.
dissertations formatted using this class. One uses the default
formatting for a book, including the Computer Modern fonts that
are the default in all TeX documents; the other exercises various
options by including the file optional.tex, and
specifies different fonts. That file describes a number of
alternatives to Computer Modern that give quite different, and
attractive, typography. However, if your dissertation contains
mathematical material, you should check carefully that the font
you choose provides all the symbols, including variants, bold
versions, and so on, that you need. Computer Modern provides the
most inclusive set of mathematical symbols.
The sample LaTeX files use the booktabs package,
to enhance the quality of tables. The author of
booktabs, Simon Fear, has strong opinions about the
layout and general appearance of tables. Your dissertation will
look much better if you follow his
guidelines.
Most journals in statistical areas, and in many others, prefer
or require the Author (year)
style for citations. This is
not an option in the standard LaTeX book class; if you use the
natbib package and the plainnat
bibliography style, the \cite command will put
Author (year)
citations in the text.
The Graduate School's web page also has a link to an archive of files for making presentation slides using the Beamer class.
This archive contains a slightly modified Beamer theme that adheres a little closer to NCSU's branding. See the sample PDF file--suggestions for improvement and contributions are all welcome!