title: How to change alignment of displayed equations in IPython Notebook?
body: <p>I would like my MathJax displayed equations in IPython Notebook to be aligned at the left instead of centered. This is controlled by a core configuration option <em>displayAlign</em> in MathJax as described <a href="http://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/options/hub.html" rel="noreferrer">here</a>.</p>
  
  <p>I have tried to set this option in IPython Notebook by adding this to my <em>config.js</em> file</p>
  
  
  
  <pre class="lang-js prettyprint-override"><code>MathJax.Hub.Config({ 
      displayAlign: "left"
  });
  </code></pre>
  
  
  
  <p>but it doesn't have any effect.</p>
  
  <p>How can I set MathJax core configuration options in IPython Notebook?</p>
  
  <p>[Update] I have found one way that works: add the above configuration lines not to <em>config.js</em> but to <em>mathjaxutils.js</em>. In my case (Windows 8) this file is found here: <code>C:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\IPython\html\static\notebook\js\mathjaxutils‌​.js</code>.  This is not a great solution though because it involves modifying a file that will presumably get overwritten the next time I update IPython.</p>
  
  <p>[Update] The technique suggested by @Ian in the comments does work, but just one notebook at a time. To summarize, I created a file <em>my_css.css</em> whose content is</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;script&gt;
      MathJax.Hub.Config({
          displayAlign: 'left'
      });
  &lt;/script&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>In the notebook, if I run this cell</p>
  
  <pre><code>from IPython.core.display import HTML
  css_file = 'my_css.css'
  HTML(open(css_file, "r").read())
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>displayed equations do get left aligned, as desired.</p>
  
  <p>However, I would like this to be the default for all my notebooks.  I tried adding this to my <em>custom.js</em></p>
  
  <pre><code>MathJax.Hub.Config({
      displayAlign: 'left'
  });
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and for good measure added this to my <em>custom.css</em></p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;script&gt;
      MathJax.Hub.Config({
          displayAlign: 'left'
      });
  &lt;/script&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But neither has any effect. If there is a way to make this setting a default for all notebooks without modifying the core IPython files, that would be perfect.</p>