Another way to remember is that < is like a squished L, for “Less than”
This is how I always remember it
<3 is “less than three”, and 3 is “three” so logically < is “less than”
Also < looks like an L at an angle
I try this, but I always get <3 mixed up with Ɛ>
#cursed
aww love you too bro <3
big side, big number
I am 54, and still every fucking time.
Never heard this till this meme, apparently I was under a rock… Or in Florida
Not a meme, just how I was taught to remember greater than / less then operator direction
Yeah I meant the saying from the meme op posted, my bad. We just were taught the bigger side faces the bigger side, smaller smaller. Alligators, Crocodiles, and Pacman I guess we never included in math otherwise we’d startt totalling how many neighborhood dogs got eaten in the retention ponds next door. Like the number 1 unspoken rule of going fishing on the St. Johns River is don’t bring your dog, haha
Also I have seen Lake Jesup sometimes have so many gators eyes at night that you’d think you could cartoon run 13 miles across it and not have to touch water.
I was being disruptive in first grade and kicked out of class then we learned this (ADHD and boredom). I tried to peak through the window and do the crocodile arms to learn it, but my teacher saw me and came out and told me to stand at the end of the hall. I didn’t really learn this until 3rd grade. Ironically, math was my favorite subject for all of k-12.
I still sometimes think of pillars of one building when I think of concept of “tomorrow” because seeing those pillars was supposedly the first time in my childhood when I heard about “tomorrow”.
I’ve always been a fan of using > and < but in the general use of lesser than or greater than, however, the symbols were always interchangeable to me since it always depends on where you put the defined integer, correct?
If I want to say something is less than 37. It can either be 37 > or < 37.
Because in that scenario the imaginary integer n is always on the opposite side of the symbol.
37 > n
n < 37
So why did > ever become greater and < be less than? Doesn’t it also depend on how your text is written? If people reading from right to left or down to up vs left to right and up to down, means it’s reversed.
The open part of the caret is where the bigger number is, the opposite side is where the lesser number is.
So why did > ever become greater and < be less than? Doesn’t it also depend on how your text is written? If people reading from right to left or down to up vs left to right and up to down, means it’s reversed.
Yes.
>is “greater than” because you’re reading left-to-right. 12 > 9, read: “twelve is greater than nine”. When reading in a right-to-left script, it’s the opposite, but because of how the BiDi spec works, the same Unicode character is actually used for the same semantic meaning, rather than the appearance. Taking the exact same block of text but formatting it right-to-left (using directional isolate characters) yields “12 > 9”, which is still read as a “greater than”, just from right-to-left.Hopefully that makes sense.
So yes, if you copy the
>character and paste in any directional environment, it will retain its meaning of “greater than”.Edit: on my phone, the RTL portion is not formatted well. If you can’t see it, try a browser.
Neat AF.
You just blew my mind with that unicode trivia. Super cool !
37 > n
“37 is greater than n.”
n < 37
“n is less than 37.”
Obviously both sentences have the same meaning, but the symbols are named that way because people usually read left to right… (in English that is)
i feel like i’ve been using latex for so long that at this point my brain has been rewired to see ≤ as ‘\le’ (less than or equal to) and ≥ as ‘\ge’ (greater than or equal to), and then this dictates how i view < and > as well
I worked for years in a data validation system. All day I was writing rules using the symbols and writing the decode of the rule in words - less than or equal to
I really don’t need mnemonics
I’m a mechanical engineer, and I often have to do a double thumbs up with my hands like b_d. It’s the only way I can remember what comes first in the alphabet. In danish you spell boat båd, and if you mess up the order the b and d will be on the outside of the boat and drown, like dåb. Still works 20 years later
I still have to mentally sing the alphabet song to double check I got the order right.
Am librarian and can confirm: we all do this. It mostly comes up when shelving or retrieving books.
Do you have dyslexia or something like that by chance? I don’t think I’ve met anyone who gets confused between b and d. (No offense, I’m just intrigued)
I don’t have dyslexia. But I did only learn how to read and write in 5th grade.
I see nothing wrong with this.
It’s a thing that I’ve always thought that people over-complicate. It’s just there, the small side with the small number the big side with the big number…
Are you a programmer? I’ve never struggled with them either, but I’ve had a lot of exposure to them due to programming since I was like 11
I am a software dev, I’ve been exposed to these since I was 5 and I’ve always thought they should be reversed, I know the logic is “bigger gap, bigger number” and never make a mistake, but deep down I know it would be more logical to “point the arrow toward the bigger number”, it just makes sense to me.
Somehow, people don’t teach this interpretation at schools. (Despite it being so obvious that it was clearly the original reasoning behind the symbols.) And then nobody talks about the fact that nobody knows how to read them, forever.
Mine had something about crossing a line through the symbol and seeing if it makes a 4 or a 7. Honestly, “the crocodile wants to eat the big number” is still better than this.
This is only tangentially related but I’ve noticed an increase in people saying backslash instead of slash when speaking an internet address aloud. I think many more people struggle with / vs \ than > vs <.
Just to note, backslash or forward slash refers to the side the slash falls to.
I remember it because I’m old and was into computers before the internet. Local drive was backslash "" as a directory separator and online it was slash “/”.
“It’s always pointing to the smaller number” is what my elementary teacher said 2<3
For a while, I’ve seen “<” and “>” as a slanted “=”, which is to say, these numbers are not equal, and the larger side is the larger number and the smaller side is the smaller number.
Works for me, IDK.
But shouldn’t it be 8 < 1 because the eight is heavier and squeezes the bars of the = together?
But shouldn’t it be 8 < 1
That would be a pair of scissors, on its way to cut the number 1.
its not a scale exactly but the size of the ends shows the size of the numbers.
No, since it’s bigger it stretches the lines apart :)
I’m with you, the croc is an opportunist and will eat the smaller, easier prey.
Thinking of an alligator is more fun though.
“The entirety of the small number constitutes a relatively smaller portion of the big number. Thus, the open side of > points to the smaller number to indicate that it’s a magnified view within the larger number.”
I hope this helps overcomplicate things for you. We must all return to crocodile.
Nope, it just sounds odd.
I’ll stick with big side = big number, small side = small number.
Crocodile? Are you guys from Florida? In Europe we learned it as duck beak, it just makes much more sense, where are the teeth? Nowhere it’s not an alligator mouth it’s a beak
Nah fam, if your bird looks like that it’s probably dead. I also learnt it as the crocodile in Germany
Duck, crocodile, they’re both archosaurs. Which means if it’s either, they should have a premaxillar fenestra on the lower jaw, but I’m not seeing any. Clearly, this must be a possum.
I’m thinking horribly mangled German bank executive with a lisp 🤷
Nono, we don’t do math in Florida anymore. Also we’d be more likely to use “alligator” (tho we have plenty of both)
I learned it as Pac Man.
A greedy crow is what they told me
I’m from Europe and I learned it as a wale (and I’m from southern Europe)
In the pre-digital age when most of this was pencil markings, it was not uncommon to see someone had drawn the teeth in.
Whoever my first teacher who taught me this did over complicate it, because when I wrapped my brain around bigger side equals bigger number and smaller side equals smaller (much later than I should have) it was a revelation and also seemed ridiculous it didn’t start out that simple.
I agree. It’s totally simple and people overcomplicate.
BTW one nice thing about German is, that you can even use the same logic for Boolean operators: The AND operator ∧ is called UND being the shorter word (when you put the name at the top). The OR operator ∨ is called ODER being the longer word.
You can use the same logic in English if you Place AND/OR at the bottom instead 😁
i also think the “etymology” of the boolean symbols is very helpful in remembering which is which. in lattice theory, their use was inspired by similar notation in set theory. so,
A ∨ Bis likeA ∪ B, whileA ∧ Bis likeA ∩ B.generally,
A ∨ Bis “the smallest thing that’s greater than or equal to both A and B”, whileA ∧ Bis “the biggest thing that’s less than or equal to both A and B”. similarly to howA ∪ Bis “the smallest set that contains both A and B”, whileA ∩ Bis “the largest set that’s contained in both A and B”. you can also take things a step further by saying that in the context of sets,A ≤ BmeansA ⊆ B. doing this means thatA ∨ B = A ∪ B, whileA ∧ B = A ∩ B. and from this perspective, the “sharp-edged” symbols (<,∧,∨) are just a generalization of their “curvy” counterparts (⊂,∩,∪).in the context of boolean algebra, you can set
False < True, which at first may seem a bit arbitrary, but it agrees with the convention the thatFalse = 0andTrue = 1, and it also makesA ∨ BandA ∧ Bhave the same meanings as described above.for some reason to remember ∩ and ∪ when I first learned it in school I visualized a mirrored symbol on top. the ∩ looked like a X which represented an intersection, while ∪ looked like an O which represented a whole. for English ∪ already looks like a U which can be thought of as short for union. that would’ve been easier.
ooh the mirror trick is quite handy. i don’t think i’ve heard that one before. i’ll keep that one in my back pocket in case i ever need it some day. i can’t remember exactly how i learned what they meant, but i think it was probably u for union and n for ntersection.
Math is my worst subject by far. This was incomprehensible to me at first, but I read it a few times and I started to kind of get it, so thank you for that.
In my mind, boolean operators meant things like AND/OR in internet searches. This functionality and using quotation marks to mean “these exact words” seem to no longer work on Google anyway.
Does anyone know how to make these work the way they used to? I used to be quite the “google-fu” master, but search has gone to total shit.
for English the AND sign looks like an A anyway. if you remember that for AND the OR is just the opposite.
I always remember those as “knife” and “cup”, but you have to know that I use my cups the wrong way around.
When you have two things AB on a table and you come in with a knife or cup (NB: upside down) from above, the knife will separate them “A or B” while the cup will catch them together like a pair of angry wasps “A and B”.
Indicative of the fact this approach is counterintuitive to our thinking, but we’re too stupid to adopt a new way to show it.
It’s not. This is schools failing worldwide to teach math in an adequate form.
I had no idea that people struggled with this so much and have come up with such crazy (to me) ways of figuring it out.
Most of the world, if asked to write down numbers 1-100 on a line, would do so left to right. The < and > symbols are arrows pointing left and right. To the left the numbers decrease (less than) and to the right the numbers increase (greater than).
All this stuff about crocodiles and ducks seems like such a bizarre way to remember it!
Edit: thanks for the comments, it’s fascinating to get an insight on how differently people’s brains work. Something that seems like such an obvious concept is just as baffling to others as the crocodile is for me.
To attempt to explain it better though: Say the number you’re comparing to is 50. If x is less than that, say 30, then it would appear to the left of 50 in the list and the arrow would point that way <–. If it’s greater than 50 then it would be to the right -->
I think about it the same way I think about + and -. I don’t think at all. I just know.
Maybe it’s because I’m a programmer and I encounter comparators more than addition and subtraction.
Your explanation is no less crazy lol.
A mnemonic device is a mnemonic device.
I think about how the symbols have two sides, one is a point (small side) and the other is wide (big side)
you say that but your method is only just as intuitive lol, wild how many methods work.
Yes, but that’s because that’s the way your mind interpreted it, it could have just as easily thought that the arrow (little side) should point in the forward direction from left to right, so ‘point to the bigger number’.
Basically two completely unrelated things both make sense to you in the same direction, and that happened to be the direction that the the people picking the symbols also picked. If they had simply picked the opposite direction, all the people who currently struggle might find out perfectly natural and be confused as to why ‘you’ have such a problem understanding it.
Here’s a wild thought: inequalities are not always written with the lower number on the left… or there wouldn’t be a need for two symbols.
Didn’t know so many people had trouble with this. To me they’re as different as b and d. Never had to think about it
