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A L TEX Math 130 Linear Algebra Prof. D.

Joyce, Clark University September 2012


A L TEX is a typesetting program. I use it to produce all my notes for classes. Its much better for anything A that uses mathematical notation than any wordprocessor. L TEX is used by publishers for research journals A in science and math as well as many textbooks. The disadvantage of L TEX is that you have to know more about it to use it. Its worth it. Look at the source le for this note. Its in the le latex.tex. Youre reading the le latex.pdf. In order to convert the source le, I use a latex program on our linux machines in the department lab. I just gave it the instruction pdflatex latex.tex and it created the pdf le youre reading. The latex.tex le itself I created using a simple editor. A The best way to learn how to use L TEX is to look at documents and their source les. There are also lots A of books on how to use it, and if youre going to use L TEX a lot, youll want to get one. But for just writing up homework assignments, you wont need to know much. A Parts of a L TEX source le. You need to declare the kind of document at the beginning of the le. This one has

\documentclass {article} on it because its just a short article. Thats all you need to write up homework and other short things. Next is \begin{document} and at the very end of the le theres a matching \end{document} This document has a title section, and I put that in so you could see how to create titles. Notice how the double backslash forces a new line in the title.
A Creating mathematical expressions. One of the main reasons to use L TEX is to make the mathematical expressions look right. Traditionally, variables like a and x are in italic fonts in printed texts to distinguish them from letters a and x. It doesnt matter whether theyre really variables or constants, so, for instance, e should always appear in italics when it means that number about 2.71. Also, spaces should appear before and after plus, minus, and equal signs as in the equation x2 + 3x 2/3 = 0, but not when multiplication or division are used, and of, course, the exponent 2 in x2 has to be raised and in a smaller size. With a word processor, you have to be constantly ddling with the fonts, spacing, size, and position to A get mathematical expressions to look right, but its all taken care of in L TEX. Just put dollar signs before and after the expression to indicate that its a mathematical expression. To get x2 + 3x 2/3 = 0, just use

$x^2+3x-2/3=0$ Sometimes you want to display a large equation on a separate line. Delimit the equation with double dollar signs for that. For example, to get 3 x2 4 2 dx = 5 2 arccos x 3 2 use 1

$$\int_2^3 \frac{\sqrt{x^2-4}}{x}\,dx= \sqrt5-2\arccos\frac{2}{3}$$ Note how easy square roots, division, and integrals are.

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