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16 Math formulas

There are three environments that put LaTeX in math mode:

math
For formulas that appear right in the text.
displaymath
For formulas that appear on their own line.
equation
The same as the displaymath environment except that it adds an equation number in the right margin.

The math environment can be used in both paragraph and LR mode, but the displaymath and equation environments can be used only in paragraph mode. The math and displaymath environments are used so often that they have the following short forms:

     \(...\)   instead of   \begin{math}...\end{math}
     \[...\]   instead of   \begin{displaymath}...\end{displaymath}

In fact, the math environment is so common that it has an even shorter form:

     $ ... $   instead of   \(...\)

The \boldmath command changes math letters and symbols to be in a bold font. It is used outside of math mode. Conversely, the \unboldmath command changes math glyphs to be in a normal font; it too is used outside of math mode.

The \displaystyle declaration forces the size and style of the formula to be that of displaymath, e.g., with limits above and below summations. For example

     $\displaystyle \sum_{n=0}^\infty x_n $