** Using WeBWorK **

A lot of this is my opinions. But at least some of it is best practices.

I'm frankly surprised that \Large has any effect at all, and doesn't cause an error. Apparently this is because MathJax has been developed to understand and give meaning to \Large. However, it won't have the effect you describe for a hard copy or if the user is using images for displaying math. The controls for LaTeX font size are different in math mode than in text mode, and \Large is one of the text mode controls. In math mode, size-based font controls like that don't exist. Instead there are: \displaystyle, \textstyle, \scriptstyle, and \scriptscriptstyle. It's a misunderstanding to think of these as controlling size. They do different things to different types of math mode characters. Still, you can loosely think of them as four sizes available in math mode.

Even if \Large is working with MathJax, I wouldn't use it. Maybe it is just personal choice, but if something is important to the presentation of the problem, I have the philosophy that it needs to be made to happen in all of the output formats (and just to mention it, also work with all of the major browsers). This approach is probably less important here with font size, but is more important if say, while working in Firefox, you were to introduce some kind of fancy css into the on-screen problem that communicates something important to the student, and for which the hard copy would not have a counterpart, or the css was not supported by say Chrome.

In the end I fall on the side of letting the end user pick their font sizes. For the whole problem, they can resize the page if needed. For specifically enlarging the math, if that is something the user wants, they can configure MathJax to do that by right-clicking and then using Math Settings --> Scale all math.

If it is just the fractions that feel too small, then along with what Dick suggests, it is handy to know that \dfrac{a}{b} is a shortcut for {\displaystyle\frac{a}{b}}.

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Regarding \quad and other manual spacing commands, part of the trouble is that what aesthetic judgments you make from what you see on your browser don't always apply evenly across the spectrum of browsers, browser release versions, and browser OS versions. I've seen manual spacing adjustment put into the math in .pg problems that look terrible in Firefox on a Mac, but look OK in IE on a PC, for example. (And look somewhere in between in the hard copy.)

The other idea here is to keep the bits of math content as small and tidy as possible, just in case assistive technology like a screen reader can handle small and tidy, but not handle things that are more complex.

In my experience there is always a better way to accomplish the desired effect that one has when using manual spacing adjustment. But it is a matter of being aware of the options, and you can't prepare for that. It just develops over time. For instance to space out two side-by-side equations, I'd use four columns in an aligned environment rather than use a \quad. But that requires knowing the existence of aligned, and also knowing how aligned handles more than two columns. LaTeX users are more familiar with the options, but not all WeBWorK problem authors are LaTeX users. In this case with the indentation, I'd choose PGML to indent, but that would be a major change to the code. The $INDENT I described earlier would work too. (And you'd use it outside of math mode).

Thanks, Davide!

I think I've got the \quad figured out.  My code for the original question happened to use \quad in a non-standard way.  I've already fixed that.  But as others including you have mentioned, \quad is very useful in spacing formulas on the inside.

However, I am still struggling with finding a suitable replacement for the \Large formatting of formulas (when using MathJax, since it often renders smaller than the surrounding text, while image mode automatically is larger than the surrounding text).

Take this problem for example:

Library/Utah/Intermediate_Algebra/set7_Exponential_and_Logarithmic_Functions/s7p14.pg

See the relevant code below.

In the MathJax version of the problem, it appears with the exponents almost too small to read by default.  See image below.  Now, perhaps I am misunderstanding, but it sounds like you and other are suggesting that my wanting to make the equations larger is for my own eyesight and thus I can make it larger in my own browser (as can my students) as needed.  But this isn't my purpose.  I want it to be legible to all my students when they open the problem without needing to know how to magnify a webpage in order to make it easier to read.

When I do insert a \Large to operate on both formulas, they become perfectly sized and legible.  Perhaps I missed it, because I didn't understand the mention of the MathJax menu, but what is the standard way to resize (make larger here) the MathJax font in my problem?

I am already happy with the way the image mode presents these problems (they are already larger), so I am not worried about them not being made larger.

The code at issue is:

TEXT(EV2(<<EOT)); 

Rewrite the following expressions using just one rational exponent.

Enter the numerator and denominator of the exponent.  Cancel any

common factors.  

$BR 

\( (u^{\frac{3}{2}})^{\frac{4}{5}} = u^{\frac{a}{b}} \) where

\(a=\)  \{ ans_rule(4) \} and

EOT

ANS(num_cmp(6, mode=>"strict"));

TEXT(EV2(<<EOT)); 

\(b = \)  \{ ans_rule(4) \}.

EOT

ANS(num_cmp(5, mode=>"strict"));

TEXT(EV2(<<EOT)); 

$BR 

\( (z^{\frac{4}{3}})^{\frac{9}{2}} = z^{\frac{a}{b}} \) where

\(a=\)  \{ ans_rule(4) \} and

EOT

ANS(num_cmp(6, mode=>"strict"));

TEXT(EV2(<<EOT)); 

\(b = \)  \{ ans_rule(4) \}.

EOT

If these were just fractions, I've learned that I can use \displaystyle or \dfrac to make the fractions larger, but in this problem, that makes the fractions too big relative to the bases in the formula and thus it's not a viable solution.

Inserting the \Large before both fractions gave me this version in MathJax mode:

In image mode it still appears fine (as it did before) as:

I appreciate all the new things I have already learned in this thread.  I can understand the desire to make our problems follow standard practice wherever possible too, but my first objective is to make these problems legible and easy to follow for my students.

Perhaps I should just use image mode... but it seems that there are different issues that sometimes arise then in the newer versions of WeBWorK, and MathJax works with screen readers, and it's the standard mode for most users and I would like to use it too.  =)

Thanks so much!

Paul