I am typing a series that involves higher order time derivatives, and I have two main problems.
First, the subscript of the derived variable seems to move further away from it with the more characters on top, is there a way to fix that?
Second, what is the best way to typeset an nth order derivative without it being too big as in \overset{(n)}{V}
, or too high as in \overset{{}^{(n)}}{V}
?
Here is an example that shows all the mentioned problems:
\documentclass[border=10pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{mathtools}
\begin{document}
$\displaystyle
\dot{V}_t = \dot{V}_{t-1} + \ddot{V}_{t-1} dt + \frac{\dddot{V}_{t-1}dt^2}{2} +
\frac{\overset{(4)}{V}_{t-1}dt^3}{6} + \dots + \frac{\overset{{}^{(n+1)}}{V}_{t-1}dt^n}{n!}
$
\end{document}
EDIT:
\overset{\text{\tiny $(n)$}}{V}
works for reducing the size of the overset, but the subscript distance is still a problem
EDIT 2:
The subscript distance can be reduced by adding negative spaces as in \frac{\overset{{}^{(n+1)}}{V}_{\!\!\!t-1}dt^n}{n!}
. I'm not sure if it's the cleanest way to do it, but it works
Best Answer
There's probably no single or unique "correct" way to typeset this expression, but
using
\scriptscriptstyle
for the overset terms(4)
and(n+1)
,using
\mathclap
to "smash" the width of the term(n+1)
, andinserting a thinspace,
\,
, in front of thedt
termsmay be what you need: