How to ask Mathematica to display answer in “$\LaTeX$” form

Question

I am not sure how to explain it, but whenever I compute something in Mathematica, the output always spits back the result in a Mathematica language as opposed to easy-to-read equations.

It's troublesome if my answer contains multiplies of parentheses and if my matrix is large.

Is there a way to make Mathematica display answers in "$\LaTeX$" form? So for instance, if i compute

RowReduce[{{1, 0}, {0, 1}}]

How do I make it spit out a square matrix instead of giving me back {{1, 0}, {0, 1}}?

Answer 1

Two possible answers.

1. TexForm converts a Mathematica expression into something you can use to paste it in TeX:

   TeXForm[x/Sqrt[5]]
   ==> \frac{x}{\sqrt{5}}
   

   A usually more convenient way of achieving this is right-clicking output, and selecting Copy as | LaTeX.

2. If all you're looking for is a neater display form inside Mathematica, then have a look at MatrixForm and TraditionalForm.

   m = {{1, 2}, {3, 4}};
   TraditionalForm[m]
   MatrixForm[m]
   

   

   Be careful only to use these commands to display already existing values. For example, when you're writing something like

   m = TraditionalForm[{{1, 2}, {3, 4}}];
   Eigenvalues[m]
   

   then m is not assigned the matrix, but its TraditionalForm representation, which does not behave like a matrix anymore. The output of the above is simply a silly line: