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## Math on web pages (Advancing Technology)

I’m a luddite. When you, Mr Ed Tech advocate, come up with new stuff to try to impress me, it usually doesn’t.

But, there’s more than edtech out there in the world. People have been doing crafty stuff. Stuff like MathJax. Available both as a wordpress plugin, or a one line script load at the beginning of any web page.

Which lets you do stuff like this1: $$e^x = \sum\limits_{n=1}^\infty \frac{x^n}{x!}$$

Notice that it’s not a image – it’s cut and pastable. And it looks good, and matches the fonts you’re using. Sure, you need to learn latex, but that’ll probably serve you well should you want to continue to create mathy type expressions in the future.

1 What I actually typed in: e^x = \sum\limits_{n=1}^\infty \frac{x^n}{x!}

1. Cindy W | August 9, 2012 at 8:59 am | Permalink

Thanks for the tip. I use WordPress, so I will add in the plugin (after I figure out how to do that!) I don’t upper level teach high school (anymore) but it will still come in handing blogging about teaching Algebra. I also don’t know Latex, but I have an App called MathBot that is helping with that. It allows you to type in an equation using an Equation Editor and translates your equation to Latex, like this:

m=\frac{y_{2}-y_{1}}{x_{2}-x_{1}}

Not sure if it will convert in the comments -well see :)

2. Mr. K | August 9, 2012 at 9:31 am | Permalink

It should work in comments, but you need to bracket it with a double \$ (i.e. two dollar signs jammed next to each other, both before and after your latex string)

$$m=\frac{y_{2}-y_{1}}{x_{2}-x_{1}}$$

Unfortunately, it uses javascript, and I don’t think blogs hosted at wordpress.com allow javascript – it’s a cookie security thing, since they all sign from the same domain. Fortunately, they still support LaTeX, it’s just not as nice as MathJax is.

3. Cindy W | August 9, 2012 at 5:58 pm | Permalink

Ok, thanks :)
I saw yours before it converted. Good to know!

4. Kate MacInnis | August 23, 2012 at 8:54 pm | Permalink

Blogs hosted at wordpress can use the built-in LaTeX support— there’s no need for an extra plugin.

http://en.support.wordpress.com/latex/