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…
“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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 ∨ B is like A ∪ B, while A ∧ B is like A ∩ B.
generally, A ∨ B is “the smallest thing that’s greater than or equal to both A and B”, while A ∧ B is “the biggest thing that’s less than or equal to both A and B”. similarly to how A ∪ B is “the smallest set that contains both A and B”, while A ∩ B is “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 ≤ B means A ⊆ B. doing this means that A ∨ B = A ∪ B, while A ∧ 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 that False = 0 and True = 1, and it also makes A ∨ B and A ∧ B have 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.
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.
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”.
The teacher who first taught me told me “Pac Man wants to get the most points” and that stuck with me
I don’t think I’ve ever been taught a mnemonic with animals
The small number is on the small side of the symbol, the large number is on the large side, it seems pretty intuitive to me, to be honest.
I learned it that way, along with the = sign showing the sides are equal. But by the time I was teaching, we used Pac-Man, drawing the rest of him around the hungry mouth. I still added “another way to look at it is,” and described the spaces:
Big>little same=same little<Big
Because it doesn’t matter how your mind makes the connection, as long as it works for you.
Edit to add:Pac-people are easier to draw than crocodiles
The Nemo file manager still managed to fuck it up. ‘Triangle pointing down means small filesizes on top, yeah?’
“Points at the smaller thing”
Every time I watch a student stall out on inequalities I ask “it’s the crocodile isn’t it?”. Without fail, they’ve got confused by it and as soon as they hear “points at the smaller thing” they have no issues.
I got a zero on a math test in second grade because I said “the bigger number is on the bigger side” instead of “the crocodile wants to eat the bigger number”, fuck you 2nd grade math teacher who made me hate math by being the thought police.
