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LaTeX Tutor Sub and Sup

There are many online tutors for learning to type. They're useful. Here's one, that helps new LaTeX users learn and practice subscripts and superscripts. (It uses an instant-preview widget, based on MathJax.)

Although only a proof-of-concept prototype, it might already good enough to help some people. And perhaps inspire others.

Subscripts and superscripts

The lesson starts here. The basics are:

  • use underscore ‘_’ for subscript
  • use caret ‘^’ for superscript.

Grouping

This is an advanced topic, which can't be avoided.

Some formulas, such as $2^{10}=1024$, require grouping. Without grouping one gets $2^10=1024$, which is something different.

2^{10} = 1024 % With grouping. Correct.
2^10 = 1024 % Without grouping. Wrong.

The basics of grouping are:

  • use left curly brace ‘{’ to start a group
  • use right curly brace ‘}’ to end a group
  • the left and right curlies must be properly nested

Grouping is sometimes hard. Particularly when the nesting is complicated.

Instructions

  1. The exercise widget is below. The first two boxes contain formulas. Your task is to make the second box the same as the first.

  2. The third box (blue edged) is where you type the answer. Change its content, to change the second box.

  3. For these exercises, the third box starts with the correct answer, but with some of the ‘_^{}’ symbols removed.

  4. Your task is to add the missing symbols. That's all you need to do.

The exercise widget

\[\] \[\]
  • First box: the mathematics to typeset.
  • Second box: your answer so far, typeset.
  • Third box (blue edge): type your answer here.
  • Done? Press [Enter] to get a new task.
  • Stuck? The solution is below.

Solution:

Interested? Want to help?

If you like this and want to help, please let me know. Here are some of the ways:

Careful, thought-out and friendly criticism is a sincere compliment, and a valuable source of help. (That's the way I see it, on my good days.)

Found a bug? Got an idea?

Well done. If it's a nice one, please add it to our collection.

Further reading

Here are some other posts that might interest you

Finally

While researching this page (I'm fairly new to twitter) I found this wonderful tweet from the UK's Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB):

Make sure you capitalize the first letter of each word in hashtags so that screen reader software reads out each word separately. It also makes them #EasierToRead!

Here's a link to the tweet.