Grid/Table Formatting

[Rob_Holman]

Hello all:

I'm trying to get the program to generate a grid filled with a table that I've programmed to make practice exercises. I have two questions:

1. Suppose I generate a table of 12 problems... can I get Mathematica to organize those 12 items into a 4 X 3 grid, for example? My attempts to do this have always resulted in a 4 X 3 grid wherein each cell contained 12 items.

2. I've gotten the grid dividers built like I want, but the entry in each box basically fills the box. I'd like to leave a lot of extra room in the bottom of each grid "cell" to allow room for students to show work, but I can't seem to do this well. I've tried the Alignment and Spacing commands, but neither of these seem to do quite what I want. I've thought of making each entry in the Table a column, where the entries below the top entry are blank, but hoped there was a more elegant way to achieve what I'd like.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Rob

[Michael_Morrison]

1. Suppose I generate a table of 12 problems... can I get Mathematica to organize those 12 items into a 4 X 3 grid, for example? My attempts to do this have always resulted in a 4 X 3 grid wherein each cell contained 12 items.

Hi Rob,

If you're creating your problems all at once (like with Table), then it's easy to use Partition to get them into smaller sublists, e.g.
TraditionalForm[
Grid[Partition[Table[x^i + i x^(i - 1) + i, {i, 12}], 3]]]

2. I've gotten the grid dividers built like I want, but the entry in each box basically fills the box. I'd like to leave a lot of extra room in the bottom of each grid "cell" to allow room for students to show work, but I can't seem to do this well. I've tried the Alignment and Spacing commands, but neither of these seem to do quite what I want. I've thought of making each entry in the Table a column, where the entries below the top entry are blank, but hoped there was a more elegant way to achieve what I'd like.

There may be a way to do this directly with Grid by using Spacings and Alignment, but I took an easier route and put each element into a Pane, which allows me to specify the exact size I want. I left the width for Mathematica to set (using Automatic) and hard-coded a vertical height of 50. (I also turned on the dividers to see this padding a bit better.)
TraditionalForm[
Grid[Partition[
Table[Pane[x^i + i x^(i - 1) + i, {Automatic, 50}], {i, 12}], 3],
Frame -> All]]

Thanks,
Michael

[Rob_Holman]

Michael:

This is perfect! Thanks so much for your help.

Rob