[texhax] test for LaTeX typist ?

[Steve Schwartz]

On Wed, 2006-04-26 at 16:58 +0100, Philip TAYLOR wrote:
> "think [La]TeX"

I've never tried it, but you might try the following: I presume that
they would regard themselves as proficient in MS Word (or Lotus or ...)
and have never used LaTeX. Give prospective candidates a short article
already typeset and printed (centred title, authors, formatted abstract,
section and subsection headings, etc.) and ask them to construct an
exemplary Word document (e.g., to be used in an Intermediate/advanced
Word classroom) matching it. If they use Word styles to define the
indents, bold, fonts, etc., they at least think structurally about the
document. If they type all the text in and manually make each individual
section heading larger and bold, they'd fail my "think latex" test.

Perhaps getting them to do some simple formulae in a spreadsheet would
demonstrate the ability to think algorithmically.

Good luck!

Steve
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