I’m experimenting with MathJax to include mathematics on the blog. Part of the incredible slowness in which I write posts is doing everything by hand in HTML. For example, I have a future post for the Horn clause series that I keep not finishing because I get tired of writing the subscript tags. MathJax is the display engine used for Math Overflow and Stack Exchange, which allows you to use tex commands to represent formulas.

Here’s a sample of tex-encoded math formulas that I copied from the MathJax site.

When $a \ne 0$, there are two solutions to \(ax^2 + bx + c = 0\) and they are $$x = {-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac} \over 2a}.$$

If you actually view the source for the file in your browser, you’ll see the raw tex commands in the post. MathJax uses CSS to render it on the fly. I’m actually surprised this is possible, but apparently it is.