Following Mark Bennet's question on Short and helpful advice on using Mathjax on this site, I've began drafting a tutorial aimed at complete beginners. It can be found here. It is made up of $5$ sections:
- Getting started
- Understanding MathJax syntax
- Numbers and arithmetic
- Functions
- Chaining syntax together
(There's also a section on calculus notation, but I'm considering breaking that off from the main answer since it doesn't strike me as completely essential that a user knows those commands right off the bat.)
I've tried my best to include the syntax that comes up the most frequently, but it's almost certain that I have omitted a thing or two. Does anyone have the technical know-how to search through this site to find the MathJax commands that come up the most frequently in posts? Perhaps there is a way of finding this out using the site analytics. Thank you.
\dots
!? Why not the slicker, more modern\dotsc
,\dotsb
, and so on? :P $\endgroup$\cdots
. $\endgroup$\sin x, \cos x, \tan x
, etc. $\endgroup$\cdots
? Also, separate from that, users should know that to write a set, using braces, then need to write\{ fee, fie, fum\}
; without the backslash they will not render when surrounded with dollar signs, e.g.${1, 2, \ldots}$
renders as ${1, 2, \ldots}$ $\endgroup$\cdots
are\ldots
!!! $\endgroup$\rightarrow or \to, \leftrightarrow or \iff, \land or \wedge, \lor or \vee, \lnot or \neg
$\endgroup$\cdots
or\ldots
. I use\dotsc
for dots in lists (this is essentially\ldots
, but with slightly more semantic information,\dotsb
between binary operators (like\cdots
, but with better spacing), and\dotsi
between integrals (like\cdots
, but with better spacing for integrals. There are several similar commands: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/122491/difference-of-the-dots . $\endgroup$\frac {1+x}{(1-x^2}
would save askers and potential answerers a whole lot of time and spare them from frustration. Similar,\gcd(foo, fie)
\mid
. If you want basic think basic. $\endgroup$\mod
,\bmod
and\pmod
might be worth a mention. $\endgroup$\Bbb
for our favourite sets,\tag
for equation numbering,align
environment for long chains of equations, ... $\endgroup$