## Monday, June 20, 2011

### Writing Mathematics on our Blog with Texify!

I just learned today from Mary O'Keeffe how to include mathematics on blogger. It's not native, but does the trick, and especially a little useful if you know a little LaTeX, the mathematical typesetting language.

Let's say you want to typset the quadratic formula. In LaTeX, you would write this as

$\frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}$

Now just visit the texify web site: Texify and insert the LaTeX code where specified. The Texify website will then automatically generate html code for your formula, resulting in:

It works pretty well. If I had a blogger wish, it would be for LaTeX to be recognized natively!

For those who don't know, Mary O'Keeffe directs the Albany Area Math Circle and is also co-director for the Math Prize for Girls. She's a great resource for math circles around the country, and seeing as our math circles are so close together, I've hoped for several years that we'll find ways to coordinate some math circle activities. One idea - let's visit the Museum of Mathematics together when they open in 2012!