Equations in LaTeX: A Quick Start Guide
It’s just part of writing in science and maths — you are going to have to include some equations at some point. Of course, there are many options:
- Write out the equation on paper and take a picture.
- Type out the equation in plain text (like F = ma).
- Use a graphical equation editor (MS Word and Google Docs both have graphical editors).
- Write the equation with some sort of code (something LaTeX).
Yes, LaTeX is about more than just writing equations, but if you just know the equation code you can make some nice looking equations fairly quickly. Some platforms let you write the LaTeX code and then render the equations for you (like MS Word, Apple Keynote, Google docs, Jupyter notebooks). Other times, you can write the equation in an editor and then take a screen shot of the output to get your equation. That’s what I do here in a medium post or most other blogging platforms.
OK, one more thing. I’m not an expert in LaTeX. Sometimes I still have to look stuff up. Maybe you found this after a search for some stuff. Either way, let’s just get started. I’m going to explain the code and then show you the output for the most common things. Oh, if you are writing equations in Jupyter notebook or some other platforms, you might need to start and end your LaTeX…
