Creating Mathematical Documents with Pages

Pages is a great tool for creating mathematical documents! With a little knowledge of some commands in LaTeX (or MathML) markup language, mathematical equations and formulas can be beautifully displayed alongside text and images and easily formatted with the format inspector.

To create materials for my mathematics courses I used to use a full LaTeX implementation, writing code and compiling files to generate documents as I’d done since my first semester of graduate school. But after discovering the LaTeX math-mode command support in Pages I found it so much easier to use, especially for quickly generating notes and short quizzes, without sacrificing quality of mathematical formatting, that I now use Pages exclusively in the creation of my notes and course materials. I also encourage my students to use Pages when they typeset homework solutions and project reports, to get them thinking about what makes for clear mathematical exposition and notation without getting bogged down in complex LaTeX document code and debugging.

Pages supports most, but not all, basic LaTeX commands to typeset mathematics. While creating notes, tests and other course materials in Pages, I noted which commands worked and those for which I needed to find a replacement. Over time, the notes I had made for myself and my students grew into a full guidebook for how to use LaTeX enabled in Pages (and Keynote and Numbers too!):

Pretty Math: A guide for typesetting mathematics with LaTeX in Apple’s iWork suite

https://books.apple.com/us/book/pretty-math/id1603569667

3 replies

August 30, 2022

Have to admit I have not heard of LaTeX (or MathML), will have to look it up!

August 30, 2022

😱 Thank you Brandy. This resource is amazing and essential for any mathematics educator or content creator.

September 02, 2022

Brandy this is an incredible resource to support high students as they experience equations with proper notation using LaTeX editors. I especially appreciate that the book title is "Pretty Math" and the top ten tips are especially helpful! I was wondering if you would like to add this to the Math Forum.

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