Math Type

I don’t know of anything easy, and I doubt if it would ever be possible to do anything *easy*. There are hundreds of symbols and various complex arrangements — just for example think of the sigma notation for summation, where you have the sigma, a note below for starting value, a note above for final value which may be either numerical or infinity, and a formula following. And this is only one of hundreds of symbolic systems. For that matter, just think of the kind of complex fraction that you have to write in trigonometry to do some problems involving tangents of sums or differences of angles. To express things this complex, your program is going to have to be complex too.

There is, hidden in Microsoft Word somewhere, an equation processor. I was shown it years ago but it was more trouble that it was worth to me to learn it. You can find someone who knows Word to show it to you.

There is a program called TeX which allows you to type plain text with backslashes and the computer produces the math symbols. It is an excellent program, but you have to memorize the codes for each symbol, and there’s a fair amount of typing.

This is yet one more reason why I do NOT go along with the “forget handwriting and keyboard everything” theory — there are times and places where handwriting IS still the easiest way, and so I spend the time and teach handwriting early when there’s time to do it.