David Alexander Charles's dashboard

Personally, I would have bought such a book a year ago as I've recently finished an open university foundation science course which involved a lot of maths and for half of the course I was spending hours using all sorts of kludges to put the equations into a word document.

Half way through I discovered mathtype which made it easier, but the free version I was using (and indeed, word's built in equation editor) didn't support the features I needed to present the equations in my assignments in a professional style... a style which I know I could have achieved with LaTeX, had I the time to learn how to use it properly... but free online guides to LaTeX were wholly inadequate for use in the time I had available to me, whereas if there'd been a "Learning LaTeX" (or equivalent) book, I know I could have picked up what I needed in a couple of days flat, as I have done with PERL when I needed it.

I would still buy such a book now as I might well find a use for it in the degree I'm doing, which while not a science degree, will have aspects of science in it.