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stared
equations-explained-colorfully
TypeScript2025–2026
stared / equations-explained-colorfully

equations-explained-colorfully

KaTeX + coloring + interactivity to make equations explained well (prototype)

2Distinct people
4Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
54GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

KaTeX + coloring + interactivity to make equations explained well (prototype)

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month4 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2025-11-09 21:27:33 UTC to 2026-10-07 12:00:03 UTC.

012025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsNov 20252025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsApr 20262026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 commentsOct 2026

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Nov 20252025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Dec 20252025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
Jan 20262026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 20262026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20262026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20262026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20262026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20262026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20262026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20262026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC110
Sep 20262026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20262026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-11-01 00:00:00 UTC110

What Hacker News says

4 sources
stared·Dec 3, 2025Submission

Show HN: Equations Explained Colorfully (KaTeX and Markdown)

Hi HN! I am fascinated by various ways of explaining mathematical formulas easily — see “Science-based games and explorable explanations”: https://p.migdal.pl/blog/2024/05/science-games-explorable-ex.... In particular, I got inspired by “Understanding the Fourier Transform” by Stuart Riffle from 2011 (https://web.archive.org/web/20130318211259/http://www.altdev...), in which he color-coded the Discrete Fourier Transform formula and its description. Yet, I saw that it has two issues. First, while many people appreciate it, creating them manually is a huge hassle. Second, it does not work well for colorblind people (as a few friends of mine told me). So, I wanted to make it interactive, both to be able to choose the color scheme and so that it is useful in black and white (as you can hover and select terms). For the syntax, I picked the def
Read the rest
ault go-to, LaTeX (here it is rendered with KaTeX). For the description of the equation and explanation, I used Markdown, so it is easy to pick up. I quickly realized that adding an online editor is a game-changer: what started as an optional extra became a default, always-visible part of the tool. Some equations are more polished, some less so. Among others, there is the Schrödinger equation, the Euler equation, Shannon entropy, the grand canonical ensemble, and, of course, the Discrete Fourier Transform. I wanted to see how it works for various cases. Einstein's mass–energy equivalence serves as a starter template. Don’t be alarmed by the Maxwell equations with too many colors - I wanted to stress-test it. You can export this to a standalone HTML file with its interactivity. Also, you can export the same formula to LaTeX (both a regular article and a Beamer presentation) and Typst. For LaTeX and Typst articles, it loses interactivity, but the colors are the same. In LaTeX Beamer, there is a slide-by-slide explanation of each term. Source (MIT license): https://github.com/stared/equations-explained-colorfully/ I am curious to hear your impressions! If you want to add a formula, do so. If you want to feature it so that it is useful in your class or course, I am happy to hear which. If you want to suggest color themes, let me know. Also, if you want some other export formats, it should be easy.
4 points · Open discussion

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