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• "If you need serious math, the question / answer does not belong on stackoverflow anyway."

  Well, this may be true when we are talking about programming in C or Visual Basic. It is not true when we are talking about programming in Matlab, or R, or Octave, or Scilab, or … Questions about these languages very often involve the translation of mathematics into code, or programming problems are related to a misunderstanding of the math. Asking such questions and answering them is much facilitated by being able to use mathematical notation. Just a few examples I happened to be involved in: here, here, here, and here. I'm sure there are many more.

  I guess one might argue that questions about Matlab & Co. do not belong on stackoverflow because it is a different kind of programming. But the fact remains that the majority of Matlab questions on stackexchange are on stackoverflow, and as long as there is no matlab.stackexchange.com, I'm pretty sure they will continue to pop up here.

• "Enabling this means introducing an extremely heavy dependency."

  This does not correspond to my experience on other sites like math.stackexchange that do use MathJax. More objectively speaking, according to this detailed explanation it is simply wrong. The impact on pages that do not need math is minimal, and those that need it, well, need it.

  Talking about dependency in the sense of "it breaks if something goes away": Given its success, it is very unlikely that MathJax simply goes away, and it is much more likely that those image sites that people use now as a replacement will cease to exist. Moreover, if MathJax goes away there's still the LaTeX code itself which stays decipherable, while if an image site goes away, there's nothing left at all.

• "The developers have better things to do."

  That may very well be true, but the fact is that enabling MathJax does not involve any new development whatsoever. Apart from the fact that this has been done for other stackexchange sites already, so it could just be copied: Enabling math simply amounts to including the following lines of code into the HTML delivered by the SO server:

  MathJax.Hub.Config({"HTML-CSS": { preferredFont: "TeX", availableFonts: ["STIX","TeX"], linebreaks: { automatic:true }, EqnChunk: (MathJax.Hub.Browser.isMobile ? 10 : 50) }, tex2jax: { inlineMath: [ ["$", "$"], ["\\\\(","\\\\)"] ], displayMath: [ ["$$","$$"], ["\\[", "\\]"] ], processEscapes: true, ignoreClass: "tex2jax_ignore|dno" }, TeX: { noUndefined: { attributes: { mathcolor: "red", mathbackground: "#FFEEEE", mathsize: "90%" } }, Macros: { href: "{}" } }, messageStyle: "none" });

• "If you need serious math, the question / answer does not belong on stackoverflow anyway."

  Well, this may be true when we are talking about programming in C or Visual Basic. It is not true when we are talking about programming in Matlab, or R, or Octave, or Scilab, or … Questions about these languages very often involve the translation of mathematics into code, or programming problems are related to a misunderstanding of the math. Asking such questions and answering them is much facilitated by being able to use mathematical notation. Just a few examples I happened to be involved in: here, here, here, and here. I'm sure there are many more.

  I guess one might argue that questions about Matlab & Co. do not belong on stackoverflow because it is a different kind of programming. But the fact remains that the majority of Matlab questions on stackexchange are on stackoverflow, and as long as there is no matlab.stackexchange.com, I'm pretty sure they will continue to pop up here.

• "Enabling this means introducing an extremely heavy dependency."

  This does not correspond to my experience on other sites like math.stackexchange that do use MathJax. More objectively speaking, according to this detailed explanation it is simply wrong. The impact on pages that do not need math is minimal, and those that need it, well, need it.

  Talking about dependency in the sense of "it breaks if something goes away": Given its success, it is very unlikely that MathJax simply goes away, and it is much more likely that those image sites that people use now as a replacement will cease to exist. Moreover, if MathJax goes away there's still the LaTeX code itself which stays decipherable, while if an image site goes away, there's nothing left at all.

• "The developers have better things to do."

  That may very well be true, but the fact is that enabling MathJax does not involve any new development whatsoever. Apart from the fact that this has been done for other stackexchange sites already, so it could just be copied: Enabling math simply amounts to including the following lines of code into the HTML delivered by the SO server:

  MathJax.Hub.Config({"HTML-CSS": { preferredFont: "TeX", availableFonts: ["STIX","TeX"], linebreaks: { automatic:true }, EqnChunk: (MathJax.Hub.Browser.isMobile ? 10 : 50) }, tex2jax: { inlineMath: [ ["$", "$"], ["\\\\(","\\\\)"] ], displayMath: [ ["$$","$$"], ["\\[", "\\]"] ], processEscapes: true, ignoreClass: "tex2jax_ignore|dno" }, TeX: { noUndefined: { attributes: { mathcolor: "red", mathbackground: "#FFEEEE", mathsize: "90%" } }, Macros: { href: "{}" } }, messageStyle: "none" });

I know this has been discussed over and over again, and it may be very boring and annoying for people who have been around a while, but I'm telling you: Unless this need is fulfilled, it will continue to come up again and again and again. I've read the other posts about this matter, and as far as I can see some of the best arguments have been put forward by Neysor.

I know this has been discussed over and over again, and it may be very boring and annoying for people who have been around a while, but I'm telling you: Unless this need is fulfilled, it will continue to come up again and again and again. I've read the other posts about this matter, and as far as I can see some of the best arguments have been put forward by Neysor.

• "If you need serious math, the question / answer does not belong on stackoverflow anyway."

  Well, this may be true when we are talking about programming in C or Visual Basic. It is not true when we are talking about programming in Matlab, or R, or Octave, or Scilab, or … Questions about these languages very often involve the translation of mathematics into code, or programming problems are related to a misunderstanding of the math. Asking such questions and answering them is much facilitated by being able to use mathematical notation. Just a few examples I happened to be involved in: here, here, here, and here. I'm sure there are many more.

  I guess one might argue that questions about Matlab & Co. do not belong on stackoverflow because it is a different kind of programming. But the fact remains that the majority of Matlab questions on stackexchange are on stackoverflow, and as long as there is no matlab.stackexchange.com, I'm pretty sure they will continue to pop up here.

• "Enabling this means introducing an extremely heavy dependency."

  This does not correspond to my experience on other sites like math.stackexchange that do use MathJax. More objectively speaking, according to this detailed explanation it is simply wrong. The impact on pages that do not need math is minimal, and those that need it, well, need it.

  Talking about dependency in the sense of "it breaks if something goes away": Given its success, it is very unlikely that MathJax simply goes away, and it is much more likely that those image sites that people use now as a replacement will cease to exist. Moreover, if MathJax goes away there's still the LaTeX code itself which stays decipherable, while if an image site goes away, there's nothing left at all.

• "The developers have better things to do."

  That may very well be true, but the fact is that enabling MathJax does not involve any new development whatsoever. Apart from the fact that this has been done for other stackexchange sites already, so it could just be copied: Enabling math simply amounts to including the following lines of code into the HTML delivered by the SO server:

  MathJax.Hub.Config({"HTML-CSS": { preferredFont: "TeX", availableFonts: ["STIX","TeX"], linebreaks: { automatic:true }, EqnChunk: (MathJax.Hub.Browser.isMobile ? 10 : 50) }, tex2jax: { inlineMath: [ ["$", "$"], ["\\\\(","\\\\)"] ], displayMath: [ ["$$","$$"], ["\\[", "\\]"] ], processEscapes: true, ignoreClass: "tex2jax_ignore|dno" }, TeX: { noUndefined: { attributes: { mathcolor: "red", mathbackground: "#FFEEEE", mathsize: "90%" } }, Macros: { href: "{}" } }, messageStyle: "none" });

• "If you need serious math, the question / answer does not belong on stackoverflow anyway."

  Well, this may be true when we are talking about programming in C or Visual Basic. It is not true when we are talking about programming in Matlab, or R, or Octave, or Scilab, or … Questions about these languages very often involve the translation of mathematics into code, or programming problems are related to a misunderstanding of the math. Asking such questions and answering them is much facilitated by being able to use mathematical notation. Just a few examples I happened to be involved in: here, here, here, and here. I'm sure there are many more.

  I guess one might argue that questions about Matlab & Co. do not belong on stackoverflow because it is a different kind of programming. But the fact remains that the majority of Matlab questions on stackexchange are on stackoverflow, and as long as there is no matlab.stackexchange.com, I'm pretty sure they will continue to pop up here.

• "Enabling this means introducing an extremely heavy dependency."

  This does not correspond to my experience on other sites like math.stackexchange that do use MathJax. More objectively speaking, according to this detailed explanation it is simply wrong. The impact on pages that do not need math is minimal, and those that need it, well, need it.

  Talking about dependency in the sense of "it breaks if something goes away": Given its success, it is very unlikely that MathJax simply goes away, and it is much more likely that those image sites that people use now as a replacement will cease to exist. Moreover, if MathJax goes away there's still the LaTeX code itself which stays decipherable, while if an image site goes away, there's nothing left at all.

• "The developers have better things to do."

  That may very well be true, but the fact is that enabling MathJax does not involve any new development whatsoever. Apart from the fact that this has been done for other stackexchange sites already, so it could just be copied: Enabling math simply amounts to including the following lines of code into the HTML delivered by the SO server:

  MathJax.Hub.Config({"HTML-CSS": { preferredFont: "TeX", availableFonts: ["STIX","TeX"], linebreaks: { automatic:true }, EqnChunk: (MathJax.Hub.Browser.isMobile ? 10 : 50) }, tex2jax: { inlineMath: [ ["$", "$"], ["\\\\(","\\\\)"] ], displayMath: [ ["$$","$$"], ["\\[", "\\]"] ], processEscapes: true, ignoreClass: "tex2jax_ignore|dno" }, TeX: { noUndefined: { attributes: { mathcolor: "red", mathbackground: "#FFEEEE", mathsize: "90%" } }, Macros: { href: "{}" } }, messageStyle: "none" });