MathJax_ is a browser independent javascript rendering engine for mathematical expressions. On a MathJax-enabled site, such as Askbot :) you can display perfectly formatted mathematical formulae.
However, MathJax distribution is very large and because of the size is not shipped with Askbot.
To enable MathJax on your site, three things need to be done:
download MathJax to some directory on your server
edit webserver configuration so that url http://example.com/mathjax points to that directory and file MathJax.js is available at http://example.com/mathjax/MathJax.js. For Apache, a following line in the apache configuration file (maybe a VirtualHost section) will do:
Alias /mathjax/ http://example.com/mathjax/
in Askbot “settings” -> “Optional components”, check “Enable MathJax” and enter url http://example.com/mathjax
Note: your actual forum site must in this case be available at http://example.com. It is very important to serve MathJax media from the same domain, otherwise mathematics rendering will be very slow in Firefox and some other browsers (those using the “same origin” policy for the HTTP cookies - MathJax does use sookies to store some Math display settings)
One day enabling MathJax will be even easier, but some more work needs to be done for this to happen.