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| Equal Less and Greater Than Symbols |
Equal Less and Greater Than Symbols
This article will discuss the following symbols: =, < and >.
The equals sign = is used to show equality. Whatever is on the left side of the equals sign, can be interchanged with what is on the right side. When converting mathematical statements into words we read = as "equals" but it can also be read as "is".
For example:
2x = 35y should be read as follows:
Two X equals thirty five Y or two X is thirty five Y.
The less than sign < and greater than sign > are used to show inequalities. When trying to remember which sign is which it is useful to remember that the less than sign < looks sort of like a capital L which is slightly rotated.
Once you know which sign is which the thing to remember is to read the inequality as you would read a sentence in English, i.e. from left to right.
For example:
25 < 42 should be read as follows:
Twenty five is less than forty two.
One other neat trick that may help is that you can think of the inequality signs as an arrow that points to the smaller value. So in the above example 25 < 42 the arrow points to 25.