When I was first learning these symbols in kindergarten, I understood how to use them, but I couldn’t read them right. If I saw 2 < 3 and had to say what it was out loud, I’d say “3 is greater than 2.” I learned the proper way quickly though with some help from my teach though. No idea why that memory stuck with me.
Do they teach this in Primary School now? I’d have thought it was addition, timetables, long division etc; I first encountered these symbols learning BASIC at home.
I started elementary school in 1999, yes absolutely.
big > small
as in the symbol is big and open on one side and small and closed on the other. It could not possibly be more literal than that.That was not how it was taught to my developing elementary brain.
Sure, but if you regularly use it, wouldn’t you think more about the symbol?
And wouldn’t it make more sense to an adult brain to see one side wider and one side smaller and continue the line in order to understand which size is bigger?
YES!
Read left to right, they make perfect sense:
Less than is <
Greater than is >
They all make visual sense:
=
≠
±
<
Wait… was I the only one that got taught: small number on the small side, big number on the big side?
No cute little metaphor, just deal with the bleakness of the world, kids!
This is like when I found out everybody else got a cute little song to memorize the quadratic equation.
In Germany, we have this. At least I think that quadratic formula means the ABC Formel? If not, I’m sure dorfuchs has a video for it too.
My favorite is the one for the bionische Formeln.
That’s much better than anything we have in the U.S.
Whaaat?? Gimme the song!
To the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel”
X equals the opposite of B Plus or minus square root B squared minus 4 A C All over 2 A!
🤯💃🕺
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOXYMRcWbF8
This is the tune.
I imagine that is how the symbol came to be used. I doubt they imagined crocodiles.
When this symbol was formalized crocodiles were a much more persistent and immediate threat. They thought about them constantly.
Wow. Your school hated you if you didn’t learn about the alligator or crocodile.
Not even a mention of the duck!
The version I was taught starts with the equals sign. There is nothing simpler to depict the concept of equality than two parallel lines of the same length. Now pinch one side to spoil the equalness, the pinched side points to the smaller number in the unequal pair.
That’s so much more work than just remembering the gator wants to eat more.
I was just taught this is the symbol for bigger than and this is the symbol for less than. And we remembered them the same way we remember the letters and the numbers and all the other symbols like addition and subtraction. No need to think about it, just “<” and “less than” are equivalent in my mind.
I’m so sorry for you that you didn’t have a childhood
When I taught math to young students I used alligators…Muh haa/0/
****I’m leaving the random characters that have been added to my evil laugh. They were added by Zip the orange 3 month old terror kitten
Zip pic where?
At her innocent best.
Zip bomb!
Aw, she’s super sweet! Your printer did a great job😉
I saw the angles and assumed this was a joke about Dirac notation, which I’m still convinced is a massive joke to get mathematical physicists seriously talking about bras and ket in the staff room.
I really don’t get why you would need a mnemonic for a symbol that itself already is a mnemonic? How could it ever be confusing that big side is bigger than small side?
Because the arrow always points to the bigger number, silly. /S
She just wants to say she is writing a PhD thesis in theoretical physics.
Right? How hard is it to remember that it’s an arrow that points at the biggest number? /s
Because everyone’s brain is different and things that make intuitive sense for one person don’t necessarily make the same sense to someone else.
Yes, and that’s why they made the symbol portray what it means. I mean it’s even more clear than the equal sign, yet I haven’t heard of mnemonic’s for that?
Because there aren’t (in common use) multiple variations. If we used ≠ and ≈ to represent when the sum was arrived at via addition or subtraction, and only used = when you used both in the same equation, people would fuck that shit up all the time.
Also, you use the equal sign a lot more frequently in life. More exposure makes us remember better
I just use both with a footnote that reads “one of these symbols always lies, one tells the truth. Determining which is which left as an exercise for the reader”
I know someone who did their entire thesis purposely without using effect/affect, because they didn’t know the difference. Instead used “impact” and other similar words.
Affect is an action and effect just exists is how I always remembered it.
that’s a lot better than my method of remembering that effect is not a verb
Effect can be used as a verb though https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/effect
I can only imagine the impact that had on the end result’s impact. Probably didn’t have the impact they wanted on the readers who were unimpacted by the message.
How childish!
It’s obviously Pac-Man.
Why not just remember that the bigger side of the symbol points to the bigger number?
But the pointy end should be pointing. This phrasing could get confusing.
Sounds like a less fun version of the same rule.
rule
Calling that a rule is weird. Like do you have a rule which side of the knife is used to cut? Which part of the toothbrush goes in your mouth? You don’t? Right, cause it’s entirely obvious.
It’s more of a consensus, than a rule. It’s only obvious because of the way we phrase it and the consensus to use that symbol. But we could’ve just as well settled on something like “x follows y” or whatever and you’d have an arrow pointing at the bigger number. Or any other number of ways to compare without using that symbol exactly. It’s more a language than anything, really. What’s important is that everyone understands the same thing regardless of what symbol we use. That’s why everyone uses it like that, not because it’s obvious.
Rule rule.
( ಠ‿< )
My teacher said “Pac-Man wants to eat the number that gives him the highest score” and that sooo stuck with me
I remember learning about these in first grade and the explanation we got was “the beak of the little chick is pointing towards the bigger number” and I can’t stress how much more confusing an explaination that is compared to the crocodile. Picture the following scene:
O> \0/ / \Yes that’s a bird shut up. Observe the beak. Where is it pointing in this case? That’s right, it’s pointing the wrong way. Why did they choose this stupid explaination? Who knooooows
What in the fuck kind of backwards ass logic is that?! CROCO GO NOM NOM ON BIGGY NUMBER BECAUSE HE HUNGY! What is wrong with your teacher, my god
Pretty sure they were going for this, not a baby bird just standing there:
Oh I understand what they were going for, not the issue I have though haha
yes as it turned out in about 10 minutes, but the picture she was trying to paint wasn’t very clear to me until then
I still think “Pervert Naruto” for PV=nRT
I find the metaphors stupid when most of us can just look at the symbol: the vertex side has less distance between segments than the open side.
When I write proofs, I hate using both < & >, because the redundant complexity of juggling both orders slows me down. Just sticking to a single order like < ≤ and arranging values in that single order eased reasoning quite a bit.
