Knuth in the TeXBook gave an example of "poor
man's bold," (The TeXbook, p. 386) which can be typeset obtained by overprinting the normal weight symbol with slight offsets.
As he says:
The results are somewhat fuzzy, and
they certainly are no match for the
real thing if it's available; but poor
man's bold is better than nothing, and
once in a while you can get away with
it.
Here, one can use a similar technique and the code is shown below:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx,xcolor}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\def\PoorManContour#1#2#3{\leavevmode
\setbox0=\hbox{{#1}}%
\color{#3}\kern-.002em\copy0\kern-\wd0
\color{#3}\raise-.04em\copy0\kern-\wd0
\color{#3}\lower.04em\copy0\kern-\wd0
\color{#3}\raise0.04em\copy0\kern-\wd0
\color{#2}\raise-.012em\copy0\kern-\wd0
\color{#2}\kern.06em\copy0\kern-\wd0
\color{blue}\kern-.020em\lower.003em\box0
}
\begin{document}
\colorbox{gray!5}{\scalebox{5}{\PoorManContour{$\sqrt{\dfrac{A^3_i}{B^2}}$}{gray!60}{gray!60}}}
\end{document}
To achieve the best results possible one has to kern in small steps for possibly twenty steps or so. For simplicity, I have not done that. In the final version, you need to adjust the colors to suit, possibly changing the shading to white.
Edit
After reading Jan's comment below I read the manual and true, as the commenter said the easiest way to achieve what the OP wanted is to include the package without an option i.e., \usepackage{contour}
. Helps to RFM!
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{array,ragged2e}
\newcolumntype{C}[1]{>{\Centering}m{#1}}
\begin{document}
{\def\arraystretch{1.5}
\begin{tabular}{ C{1.8cm} | C{1cm} }
Problem & $\beta$ \\\hline
LCR-1 & 0.25 \\\hline
LCR-10 & 0.05 \\\hline
LCR-0.2 & 0.575 \\\hline
Airplane & 0.05 \\\hline
DR & 0.27
\end{tabular}}
\end{document}
Best Answer
If you accept a pure
TikZ
solution: