Thanks to a very nice blog commenter, I now know that there is a nice little work-around if you desperately want an equation in a certain font. I’m not sure it’s what I would always want to do, but if you really, really need a particular font, this will work (for a powerpoint or for a poster or some other one-off application).
There’s been a lot of discussion about getting the new Equation Editor to render in different fonts. I love the new equation editor, but I agree that it’s a pain that Microsoft only has one “math font.” (Cambria Math)
Here’s how it works: The following were all produced by creating an equation in the normal way, then selecting the whole equation and changing its format to “Normal Text” (on the Equation Tab). Once you do this, you can go back to the home tab and change the font of the whole equation. Obviously not every symbol will render correctly if that font doesn’t have certain glyphs, but I was surprised how well these rendered.
And here’s sample output (download docx or pdf here):
