Last changed 27 June 2011 ............... Length about 600 words (6,000 bytes).
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Maths equations in Moodle

By Steve Draper, Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow.

Students and staff can write maths expressions into a Moodle page (e.g. a forum, ...) fairly simply and very generally, by writing a Latex expression into a Moodle page surrounded by double dollar signs, and they appear in-line. (If you then click on the rendered maths image in Moodle you get a little popup window that shows the underlying Latex expression.)

(This method works on the GU FIMS moodle but not others. Stuart White pointed this out to me. An example of his use is here.)

Demos / examples

Unix eqn	Latex	Moodle
5 over 4 plus 2 over 3	\frac{5}{4} + \frac{2}{3}	$$\frac{5}{4} + \frac{2}{3}$$
-	\frac{\sqrt 4}{a^2 + 2}	$$For example: \frac{\sqrt 4}{a^2 + 2}; $$
-	\frac{-b \pm \sqrt{ b^2 - 4ac}} {2a}	$$\frac{-b \pm \sqrt{ b^2 - 4ac}} {2a}$$

How it works

This works by a moodle module that translates the Latex expression, renders it into a GIF image file, stores that in Moodle (not password protected), and returns an HREF to that to the user's browser. It will therefore work on any browser, including pretty old ones.

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