Sep16

Greater Than and Less Than Symbols

In order to indicate if a number is greater than or less than another, we use the symbols > and <.

For example, 10 is greater than 3, so we write it 10 > 3.

If we want to write 2 is less than 6, we write 2 < 6.

These symbols look very similar and even though children can interpret them from an early age, it is still easy to confuse them.

In this post, we are going to show you a trick to help you from getting confused!

There once was a dinosaur,

whose name was Ronny.

He lived in a cave,

and only ate hamburgers, no matter how scrawny.

He was always hungry

and when choosing between two,

the greater number is what he wants to chew.

greater than

And with two groups,

without hesitation,

he leaves the smaller amount.

When a group is equal,

he doesn’t know which to pick

and feels bad.

With this short story, I’m sure you will be able to remember which symbol you need to use when you want to compare quantities – when you should use > and when you should use <.

Greater than symbol >

With this symbol, we express that the number to the left is greater than the one to the right. For example, 10 is greater than 3, so we write it like this:

greater than

Less than symbol <

This symbol expresses that the number to the left is less than the one to the right. For example, 2 is less than 6, so we write:

Equal to symbol =

This symbol, which is much easier to recognize, is used when we want to express that two quantities are equal.

In the next Smartick update, which will happen in two weeks, we will be publishing a new interactive tutorial with the complete story about our friend the dinosaur.

Have you learned about greater than less than symbols? Feel free to share this post with your friends and colleagues so that they too can learn. And remember that in order to learn these calculations and much more like finding LCM it is best to sign up on Smartick and try it for free!

And if you would like to learn more about symbols in mathematics you can review these previous posts from our blog:

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