website/content/blog/hiding-answers-lecture-slides-latex-beamer.md

---
title: "Hiding Answers in Lecture Slides using Latex Beamer"
date: 2023-10-09T11:40:36-04:00
draft: false
tags: ["LaTex"]
math: false
medium_enabled: false
---

Asking questions is a great way to try to solicitate engagement from students. However, it can feel at odds with trying to provide a fully comprehensive slide deck at times. Similar to having notes [hidden for yourself](/blog/notes-beamer-latex/), we should also have a way to hide answers for the students of the present but not the students of the future.

LaTex beamer has the `\invisible` command which holds the space for the text but doesn't display it. We can create a new command with an if statement stating whether or not we want to use `\invisible`.

For this, I called the variable `showanswer`, but you can call it whatever you like. Put the following code in the preamble of your beamer document.

```latex
\newif\ifshowanswer
%\showanswertrue % Uncomment when you want to show the answer
\newcommand{\HideAns}[1]{\unless\ifshowanswer \invisible{#1} \else #1 \fi}
```

To write `if not` in LaTex, we need to use `\unless\if`.

Now let's see this in action. Here is a slide I gave in a recent lecture about Unification:

```latex
\begin{frame}{Examples}
	\begin{enumerate}
		\item $f(x, y) \eq f(g(x), b)$
		\begin{itemize}
			\item Answer: \HideAns{None - Occurs Check}
		\end{itemize}
		
		\item $f(x, a) \eq f(a, b)$
		\begin{itemize}
			\item Answer: \HideAns{None - Function Clash}
		\end{itemize}
		
		\item $g(x) \eq g(y)$
		\begin{itemize}
			\item Answer: \HideAns{$x \mapsto y$}
		\end{itemize}
	\end{enumerate}
\end{frame}
```

The left shows the hidden version, and the right shows the version I can distribute afterwards.

![Screenshot showing example with and without hidden answers](/files/images/blog/20231009120041.png)

Minimal Working Example:
```latex
\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{Copenhagen}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\newcommand{\eq}{\stackrel{?}{=}}

\newif\ifshowanswer
% \showanswertrue % Uncomment when you want to show the answer
\newcommand{\HideAns}[1]{\unless\ifshowanswer \invisible{#1} \else #1 \fi}

\begin{document}
\begin{frame}{Examples}
	\begin{enumerate}
		\item $f(x, y) \eq f(g(x), b)$
		\begin{itemize}
			\item Answer: \HideAns{None - Occurs Check}
		\end{itemize}
		\item $f(x, a) \eq f(a, b)$
		\begin{itemize}
			\item Answer: \HideAns{None - Function Clash}
		\end{itemize}
		\item $g(x) \eq g(y)$
		\begin{itemize}
			\item Answer: \HideAns{$x \mapsto y$}
		\end{itemize}
	\end{enumerate}
\end{frame}
\end{document}

```