Math for the Masses

Odd as it may sound, I miss all the equations from my days in grad school, so I decided that what WordPress.com needed most was a hot, niche feature that maybe 17 people would use regularly:

For those that don’t know, is a typesetting system particularly well suited for documents of a mathematical persuasion. It’s used almost exclusively by many technical, scientific and mathematical disciplines both in academia and industry. It also looks really good; I, among many, consider Donald E. Knuth a personal hero.

For those that do know, it’s now ridiculously easy to include inline formulas in your blog posts.

The syntax is reminiscent of ’s inline math mode: $latex your-latex-code-here$, and it allows you to produce most any equation. For example, the following code

$latex i\hbar\frac{\partial}{\partial t}\left|\Psi(t)\right>=H\left|\Psi(t)\right>$

yields

.

Pretty sweet, huh?

To further whet your appetite, these few standards show a bit more about what’s now possible on WordPress.com.

UPDATE: There’s a new LaTeX on WordPress.com FAQ entry that describes the “hidden” size and color options.