Suppose you want to write down some mathematics. How do you do it?

1. Option 1: by hand

This method is recommended for CS202 assignments.

Advantages

Don't need to learn any special formatting tools: any symbol you can see you can copy. Very hard to make typographical errors.

Disadvantages

Not so good for publishing. Results may be ugly if you have bad handwriting. Results may be even worse if you copy somebody else's bad handwriting.

Example

2. Option 2: LaTeX

This is what I use for writing papers.

Advantages

Very nice formatting. De facto standard for mathematics publishing. Free.

Disadvantages

You have to install it and learn it. Can't tell what something looks like until you run it through a program. Cryptic and uniformative 1970's-era error messages.

Example

The text above was generated by this source code:

\[
\sum_{i=1}^n i = \frac{n(n+1)}{2}
\]

although a real LaTeX document would also include some boilerplate around it.

You can find many introductions to LaTeX at http://www.latex-project.org/guides/. LaTeX runs on the computers in the Zoo, and can be made to run on just about anything.

There are front-ends to LaTeX like LyX that try to make it WYSIWYG. I don't use any of them personally.

3. Option 3: Microsoft Word equation editor

This is probably a bad habit to get into.

Advantages

There's a good chance you already type things up in Word.

Disadvantages

Ugly formatting.

I don't use Word much, so no example.

4. Option 4: ASCII and/or Unicode art

This is the method used on most of the pages on this wiki.

Advantages

Everybody can read ASCII and most people can read Unicode. No special formatting required. Results are mostly machine-readable (e.g., trying copying the ∑ symbol to the search box above and see what pages contain it).

Disadvantages

Very ugly formatting. Writing Unicode on a computer is a bit like writing Chinese—you need to learn how to input each possible character using whatever system you've got. May render strangely on some browsers.

Example

sum[i=1 to n] i = n(n+1)/2 (ASCII) or ∑[i=1‥n] i = n(n+1)/2 (Unicode).

Or a fancy version:

 n     n(n+1)
 ∑ i = —————— 
i=1       2

Amazingly enough, many mathematics papers from the typewriter era (pre-1980 or thereabouts) were written like this, often with the more obscure symbols inked in by hand. Fortunately (for readers at least), we don't have to do this any more.

CategoryMathNotes