A MathJax/LaTeX question

Question

In This question, the following appears:

$$[0,2] \times \left[0,4-\sqrt{3}\right] \times \left[0,4-\sqrt{3}\right] \times \mathop{\Large\times}_{i=1}^{k-3}[0,2]$$

Thinking that that last $\times$ should be somewhat comparable in size to $\sum$ or $\prod$ or $\bigoplus$ or $\bigcup,$ I tried changing it to this: $$ [0,2] \times \left[0,4-\sqrt{3}\right] \times \left[0,4-\sqrt{3}\right] \times \mathop{\Huge\times}_{i=1}^{k-3}[0,2] $$ The subscript $i=1$ definitely seems too high. Contrast these: $$ \begin{array}{c} \displaystyle \sum_{i=1}^{k-3} [0,2] \qquad\qquad \mathop{\Huge\times}_{i=1}^{k-3} [0,2] \qquad \qquad \sum_{i=1}^{k-3} [0,2] \\ \hline \end{array} $$ Can this be corrected?

Answer 1

You need to vertically center the symbol on the math axis: \mathop{\vcenter{\Huge\times}}

$$ [0,2] \times \left[0,4-\sqrt{3}\right] \times \left[0,4-\sqrt{3}\right] \times \mathop{\vcenter{\Huge\times}}_{i=1}^{k-3}[0,2] $$ $$\begin{array}{c} \displaystyle \sum_{i=1}^{k-3} [0,2] \qquad\qquad \mathop{\vcenter{\Huge\times}}_{i=1}^{k-3} [0,2] \qquad \qquad \sum_{i=1}^{k-3} [0,2] \\ \hline \end{array}$$

BTW, this only works in MathJax. In real LaTeX, you cannot use \Huge in a math formula: you’d have to write \mathop{\vcenter{\hbox{\Huge$\times$}}}.

(If you were writing an actual macro to support it, you should probably also use \mathchoice to supply different sizes for the four TeX math styles so that it could be used outside of displaystyle, maybe use relative size commands \larger instead of \Huge to adapt to the environments, and you should put \m@th inside the embedded $ ... $ to reset \mathsurround to 0pt in case someone changed it.)