WordPress LaTeX Issues

This is just a brief notice. There appears to be a new problem with WordPress.com displaying LaTeX maths equations. The issue appears to be sporadic, with some of the formulas on both old and new posts now showing “Formula does not parse”. It is affecting other blogs hosted on WordPress too. Thanks to Timothy Gowers on twitter for pointing this out.
The WordPress team are looking into it. Hopefully this will be fixed soon. Update: This issue has now been fixed.

For now, the following method can be used to display the equations using MathJax instead. Click here, then drag the displayed link to the address bar of your browser. Then click on it while viewing any page on this blog, and all formulas will be displayed with MathJax. Magic!

Some tests follow. At the time of writing, some of the following formulas show an error:
Test: ${X^n\xrightarrow{\rm ucp}X}$.

Another test: ${X^n\xrightarrow{\rm ucp}X}$

Yet another test: ${X^n\rightarrow X}$

And another: ${X^n X}$

And another: $X^n X$

And another: ${[S]_\infty}$

yet more: ${[S]_\infty}$

and more: $[S]_\infty$

and more: $[S]$

more: $S_\infty$

What’s in a Name?

That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.
You may have noticed, if you pay attention to the address bar, that the domain of this site has changed, and it is pretty sweet! We are now almostsuremath.com, not almostsure.wordpress.com.
It would have been sweeter still to be almostsure.com, but the owner of that domain is not wanting to give it up. The new url contains the name of this site, and is descriptive, so is still pretty good.
It is not just a name change though. Ads have gone away! I dug into my pocket and found the £3 a month to get rid of ads and map my own domain here. Also, switching to the new domain opens up possibilities…such as a self hosted wordpress site, more customization, mathjax, etc.

Is this a Blog?

Well, according to the tagline, it is a “random mathematical blog”, and is hosted on the popular blogging platform, WordPress.com. According to Wikipedia, a blog is a

discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts).

Most of the posts on this site are not especially discrete, consist of some quite formal maths, and are not at all diary style. According to wix.com, blogs are

regularly updated websites that provide essential insights into a certain topic.

I like to think think that this site provides essential insights into stochastic calculus and probability theory, but how regular is regular? Daily? To qualify, it should probably be weekly, at least. Here, I can go a month or so without updating. It has sometimes been significantly longer between updates. I try and write posts containing proper rigorous mathematics, and to explain things as well as I can. The style that I aim for in many of the posts here are not unlike you might see in published maths papers or in textbooks. These take some time, and I cannot just rush out a post containing detailed proofs and explanations of mathematical theory. It is not my job, just something that I like to do. I like to work through advanced maths subjects, prove results, and to get a good understanding of these. It would be possible to post weekly, but the style would not be the same and the mathematical content would be much reduced and at a shallower level, which is not what I would enjoy doing.

So, no, this is not a blog!

I should probably change the tagline. This is a random mathematical website. I would however like to change the style of the site a bit. The idea is to update with detailed maths posts, as always, but not on a weekly basis. However, I am inclined to also do some weekly updates. Just short updates on mathematical subjects, or anything related to this website. I’ll see how it goes…