LaTeX : markup for mathematics

LaTeX is a language developed from the TeX computer typesetting language which was originally created by the computer scientists Donald Knuth in the 1970s.

LaTeX is generally represented by the logo $\LaTeX$ , which you will only see if your browser can render LaTeX correctly. If this logo does not display, then you should look at the Getting Started page of this web site, which will indicate what browsers support LateX and which do not. Using LaTeX we can easily enter mathematical expressions such as xxx which are in the language of mathematics itself.

I will be providing some notes on how to use LaTeX, with particular reference to how to make comments on the posts and pages in this web site, and in cases in which you need to put your questions in mathematical language.

In the mean time, here are some samples…

LaTeX code	Output
ax^2+bx+c=0	$ax^2+bx+c=0$
x+2=\dfrac{3}{2x-1}	${x+2=\dfrac{3}{2x-1}}$
x-\dfrac34a=\pm\sqrt{\dfrac{-32b+pa^2}{16}}	$x-\dfrac34a=\pm\sqrt{\dfrac{-32b+9a^2}{16}}$
\lvert{x}\rvert<2	$\lvert{x}\rvert<2$
\displaystyle\lim_{h\to0}\dfrac{f(x+h)-f(x)}h	$\displaystyle\lim_{h\to0}\dfrac{f(x+h)-f(x)}h$
sin^2\theta+cos^2\theta=1	$sin^2\theta+cos^2\theta=1$

This perhaps provides a small taste of what can be done to represent mathematics on the web.

As you can see, the codes in the left column contain what is displayed in the right column, and in most cases you can see how they link up. There are many special codes which start with the backslash/oblique character \ and which then have a special markup code after them.

Here is an explanation of the codes used in the above examples.

^	exponent, so that ^2 means “to the power of 2”
\dfrac	fraction in display format – since \frac by itself represents a fraction but does not display well (different font sizes)
{ }	group items together to be treated as a unit
\sqrt	put the following unit under the square root sign
\lvert \rvert	put in the vertical bars around an item to represent absolute values
\lim_	represent the limit
\theta	represent the Greek lower-case theta letter

There are thousands of codes in LaTeX to represent mathematical symbols (such as subscripts $a_2$ ) and special characters (such as $\theta$ and $\to$ ), and it is a challenge to represent these.

In drawing up this site I have had to find the best way to represent mathematics, so that you can also speak mathematics back to me, and I will be adding to this knowledge of LaTeX as the site is developed further.

mathematics for South Africa