using fractions in exponents

[Rachael Verbruggen]

Hello,

I am working on a project that involves fractional exponents. We are trying to find a way to display fractions in exponents that work for everyone, but that is proving difficult. We originally formatted them as 2^{a/b}, however, the people I am doing the project for do not like the look of this. We are finding that formatting them as 2^{\frac{a}{b}} causes the fraction to be too small to read. We also tried formatting them as 2^{\tfrac{a}{b}}, which makes the numbers in the exponent larger, but we've run into problems when there is more than just a single fraction in the exponent. There is extra spacing between the fraction in the exponent and the things after it (also in the exponent).

To see an example you can see this page: http://join-cel.uwaterloo.ca/~m22stewa/mathjax/scaled-down-math-testing.html

I also produced the problem at http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/test/sample-dynamic.html by entering the following code: e^{\tfrac{1}{2}+c}.

I would appreciate any advice on what other people are doing to format fractional exponents, or any thoughts people have on the extra spacing that is occurring in the exponent with the use of tfrac.

Thanks,

Rachael

[Davide P. Cervone]

Personally, I think it is a mistake to use text style for the fractions in exponents, but if that's really what you want to do, try

e^{\mathord{\frac{1}{2}}+c}

which will make the spacing better.  (It turns out there is a bug in MathJax that is putting in too much space.)

Alternatively, you could do

e^{{\large\frac{1}{2}}+c}

which will get you a size in between the usual script size and the too-large text size.

Davide

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[Davide P. Cervone]

An alternative would be to adjust the scaling factors used by MathJax when producing the fractions.  See

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mathjax-users/4xSnD7pFiwA/EkxLLCh8Nj0J

for some discussion of this.

Davide

On Sep 10, 2014, at 4:24 PM, Rachael Verbruggen wrote:

[William F Hammond]

Properly sized-parentheses around the exponent should help.

That is,
\[ e^{\left(\frac{1}{2} + c\right)} \]

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William F Hammond
Email: gel...@gmail.com
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