/num2tex

Primary LanguageJupyter NotebookMIT LicenseMIT

num2tex

num2tex converts a float or int into a TeX-formatted string. num2tex inherits from str.

  1. Installation
  2. Usage
  3. num2tex in Jupyter
  4. Future Work
  5. Thanks

Installation

Install with

pip install num2tex

Usage

num2tex can be used in a similar manner to that of str

from num2tex import num2tex
print(num2tex(13.6e15))
1.36 \times 10^{16}

which gives the same precision and float/scientific notation formatting as print(str(13.6e15)) or print(13.6e15) but in TeX format. For some numbers, the default str formatting may be unintuitive and give too many significant figures:

print(num2tex(9.876e15))
9876000000000000.0

so instead we can use format as we would for a string, in this example specifying 3 significant figures:

print('a = {:.3g}'.format(num2tex(9.876e15)))
a = 9.88 \times 10^{15}

Or we can set the precision from the beginning so that it always displays the desired number of significant figures.

a = num2tex(1.26e10,precision=2)
print('$a = {}$'.format(a))
$1.3 \\times 10^{10}$

but keep in mind that precision can still be overridden by a format specifier:

print('$a = {:f}$'.format(num2tex(13.6e10,precision=2)))
$a = 136000000000.000000$

num2tex in Jupyter

num2tex will produce Jupyter-friendly output by default, and can be used in LaTeX-friendly modules like Matplotlib:

Sample Jupyter output

Using \cdot or parentheses to display the exponent

Use the num2tex.configure() option to change how the exponent is displayed:

>>>from num2tex import num2tex
>>>from num2tex import configure as num2tex_configure
>>>num2tex_configure(exp_format='cdot')
>>>num2tex(1.3489e17)
'1.3489 \cdot 10^{17}'
>>>num2tex_configure(exp_format='parentheses')
'1.3489 (10^{17})'

Future Work

  1. Add format option e.g. a = num2tex(num=1.36e10,format='.2g')
  2. TeX-rendering support for Google Collaboratory
  3. Additional testing
  4. Get user feedback
  5. Look into better Jupyter display of something like print('$a = {}$'.format(a)) without needing to import Display and Math, possibly by allowing num2tex to accept a string input, and using a different _repr_latex_() function if the input is a string.

Thanks

num2tex is inspired by a relevant stack overflow question and Lauritz V. Thaulow's answer as well as a num2TeX function for GNU Octave by Karl Wette