Difference between greater and less than signs?

Question

I remain confused by greater than and less than signs, as indicated in this short music video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmFL9AvcR5M&t=1s

Answer 1

"$<$" is less than, "$>$" is greater than. I remember these by remembering that the part where the point is is always smaller. So $7>3$ makes sense because the $3$ is next to the point, and is the smaller of the numbers. $7<3$ would be incorrect by the same logic.

Answer 2

You put your finger far apart to indicate something is big. And you pinch your fingers together to indicate something is small.

So the bigger thing is always on the side where the lines are far apart and the smaller thing is always on the side where the lines are pinched together.

They both say the same thing.

$3 < 7$ and $7 > 3$ both say "of the two numbers $7$ and $3$, $7$ is the larger one and $3$ is the smaller one". Which sign you use indicates what position you placed the numbers in. The pinch end will always point to the smaller one and the splayed out end will always indicate where the bigger number is.

Answer 3

When someone is saying, "Two is greater than one", he/she is saying $2>1$. Think about the game pacman, pacman wants to eat more, so the GREATER value ($2$) is where the mouth is pointing to.

I have found more success with "pacman" than with alligators.

Here is the image which portrays what you should be thinking:

Note: For two numbers $a$ and $b$, with $a$ being the larger number, $a>b$ means the same as $b<a$. If you read it from left to right, the two inequalities mean "$a$ is greater than $b$" and "$b$ is less than $a$".