Mathematical formulae with MathJax

I sometimes need to put formulae into my web pages, and I've been exploring the use of MathJax .

In the past I've inserted the formula into MS Word with MS Equation 3.0, doing a screen capture, cropping the image to the formula I want, saving as a .GIF file, and then displaying it on the web page as an image. So I get something like this for the Poisson distribution:

That's not ideal. If I want to change anything, I have to start all over again from Word. It's also messy if I want to put something like into the text; for a start it doesn't line up properly. MathJax allows me to type the formula in LaTeX style directly into the HTML code for my web page. Now I get this:

or in the text \( \hat \lambda \). I think it looks better, and I can easily make changes just by changing the HTML code. Eg. it's easy to make it smaller and blue:

\[P(x) = \frac {\lambda^x}{x!}e^{-\lambda} \]

or big and red: do not confuse \( \hat \lambda \) with \(\lambda\) !

or to change the symbols used:

Not being familiar with LaTeX syntax, I found Carol Fisher's page on TeX commands very useful.