Why Render Math?
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The ability to represent something neatly in mathematical notation allows us to represent advanced mathematical concepts much more easily.
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But when we start to display math notation digitally, you face the challenge of finding the right characters to further represent math notation more neatly.
- In addition, there is also that challenge of aligning each symbol in a way how math is written in paper
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However, this is what LaTEX lets you do: it allows you to display math notation more neatly than using letters found in your keyboard.
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Instead, of typing fractions as 1/(a+b), you can instead display them as
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And you can even represent much complicated mathematical notations such as the one below!
How to Render Math?
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Math can be rendered in many different ways, however, one that’s most popular is in LaTEX notation.
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LaTEX is most common used in academia and research, and is still used today to typeset documents.
- They are most notable in displaying professionally neat notation, which is most often used digitally to display notation.
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Browsers utilize this by using code libraries like:
- MathJax: one of the most popular libraries supported by almost every single browser out there. Uses JavaScript to display and process math notation and uses markup based on LaTEX. It has a wide range of libraries to support all types and varieties of math notation. It is actively managed by the American Mathematical Society at present.
- KaTEX: a smaller math library initially developed by Khan Academy that is designed to be much faster and self-contained. Unlike MathJax, it only a small subset of its LaTEX libraries.
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This site renders math equations with KaTEX while Obsidian, the main environment where this site is made, renders its math equations with MathJax.