Math & Science ⇒ Text in formulas

[kapowza]

Is there any way to put actual text inside a mathematical formula? I'm writing some review notes for my students, and I wanted to make a fraction expressing that probability was \frac{number of successful outcomes}{number of total outcomes}.

[kaiserkarl13]

The \mbox command works in many cases:

Code: Select all

\[ \frac{\mbox{number of successful outcomes}}{\mbox{number of total outcomes}} \]

However, this will produce text that's the same size as body text, which may or may not be what you want (especially if the text is used in a super- or subscript).

The amstext package (included automatically by the amsmath package) defines the \text command, which serves the same purpose but gets the sizing right:

Code: Select all

\usepackage{amstext}
\[ \frac{\text{number of successful outcomes}}{\text{number of total outcomes}} \]