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Complete this statement using less than or greater than--
that's what those symbols are-- for this kind of
brackets there.
So all they're asking is they have a 5 and they have a 2,
and they want us to put either a less than sign for these
brackets or a greater than sign.
So we just have a 5 and a 2, and we're just
comparing the two.
Which number is greater?
Well, 5 is greater.
If you count to 5, you're going to pass up 2.
If you look at a number line here, if you started at 0, 1,
2, 3, 4, 5, you see that 2 comes before 5.
2 is less than 5.
If I have $2, that's less than $5, or $5 is greater than $2.
And so the symbol for greater than, the way you remember
it-- this is probably the hardest part of how do you
remember it-- is you want the larger side of the symbol
facing the larger number.
So 5 is the larger number, so we want the
bigger side of the symbol.
So we want it like this.
The way I think about is that this right here is the big
side of the symbol, and this right here, this point, is the
small side of the symbol, so 5 is greater than 2.
If it was the other way, we would write 2 is less than 5.
Once again, though, we always have the point pointing to the
smaller number, and we have the wide-open part, the big
part of the symbol, pointing to the larger number.