## Math summation symbol in LaTeX

Posted: 15th August 2009 by Tim in LaTeX
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

LaTeX is great in that it can display all those strange math symbols for you.  Summation is a common symbol in math and really useful to know how to display in LaTeX.

There are two ways of displaying the symbol: compressed to fit onto one line (useful when printing long equations or proofs) or in a larger, more readable format. See below for an example.

Let’s say we want to print out the sum of n^2 for n between 1 and 10. To do this we would do the following:

\sum_{n=1}^{10} n^{2} (compressed format)

\displaystyle\sum_{n=1}^{10} n^{2} (full format)

Remember that the code must be in math tags. ie: $\sum…$, $\sum…$, etc.

10
n=1 n2
1. André says:

You saved my life! I needed to display the full format but did not know the comand \displaystyle – thanks a lot!

2. Gaurav Mittal says:

Thanks a lot

3. Shashee Kant Sharma says:

thanx a lot dear

4. Ted says:

Suppose in the above expression, we wanted to include the constraint subject to “n not equal to 5” . How would the expression now be written in LaTex?

Many thanks!

5. no one says:

\limits isn’t better?

for example:
\sum\limits_{i=1}^n i^2

http://latex.wikia.com/wiki/Sum-class_symbol

6. Kumar Gaurav says:

Thanks man

7. John Val says:

Thanks a lot

8. bharathi says:

Thank u very much…

9. Miracle Israel Nazarious says:

$$\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} 2^{-n} = 1$$

Much easier.