Writing math equations

[Reyed Mia (Apprentice, DIU)]

Writing math equations

All right, math and science teachers. It's time to take a look at a function that's going to save you a lot of time, and help you create higher quality work for your students. Here, we're going to take a look at how to use equations properly inside of Microsoft Word. If you're like me, for many years I wrote equations just as you can see on the screen. To do one half plus 3 4ths, I would use a forward slash between the one and the two to indicate a fraction. I would use the built in plus sign on the keyboard, and then the same thing for 3 4ths. Down here, for the 16 times 4 divided by 8, to indicate division, I would also use a forward slash. And then, often, if it got too complicated, I would just use words.

So instead of actually putting the quadratic equation into a paper, I would just say, use the quadratic equation to solve for, and then give them the problem. We can work a little bit smarter, and make sure we give our students a better experience by using the built in equation features inside of Office. To follow along with equations I'm using, please go ahead and locate Chapter Three in your exercise folder and open up the Math Homework file. To get started, let's place our cursor directly below the first equation that we'd like to change. Up in the ribbon we're going to select Insert and click on Equation. Here a placeholder text box has been added where we can start typing our equation.

For this first one, I'm only going to type the exact same was I would to add it normally. I'm going to use a one, a forward slash, a two, press Space, and oh, Word went ahead and corrected the one slash two to a one half. I'm going to go ahead and add a plus sign, and do the same thing for 3, forward slash, 4, hit a space, and I get a 3 4ths fraction. I'll add my equals sign, click outside the box, and I now have a properly formatted fraction equation.

This really helps students when they need to be reminded to line up the denominators, or if they need to find common denominators. Let's go ahead and go on to problem number 2. Once again, I'm going to put my cursor directly beneath the problem. I'm going to go to Insert, all the way on the right hand side and select Equation. When I select Equation, please notice the Equation toolbar up in the ribbon has now been opened. Here I have the variety to select certain pre-filled out equations, there's a variety of symbols available to me. As well as some pre-designed mathematical functions that will allow me to enter in numbers into appropriate placeholder fields.

For this equation, I would like to leave it in line, but I want to make sure that instead of using a capital X, I use a true multiplication sign. And instead of using a forward slash, I use a true division sign. To do that, I'm just going to go ahead and start typing my equation as normal. I'm going to do a bracket 16, put a space, I'm going to come up to the top symbols toolbar and I'm going to select the multiplication sign. Open another space, type a 14, closing bracket and now I can select the division icon from the top equations toolbar.

After my division sign's in place, I can type my 8 and my equal sign, click outside of the equation box, and I now have a properly formatted equation for my students to solve. Let's go and talk about using larger or common used equations. Once again, I'll put my cursor directly below problem number three, going to the top ribbon and clicking on Insert. To the far side clicking on Equation. Now there's two ways that I can insert the quadratic equation.

First off on the left hand side I can click on the Equations drop down menu and here are a variety of equations that Word has pre-built in for us. I can select the quadratic formula click outside of the box and it's automatically entered for me. Becoming familiar with the equation functions will allow you to write math problems that are properly formatted for your students to solve.

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/office-for-educators/writing-math-equations