What is 31 and 43. Is it less or greater than each other.

Question

I don’t get it. If you could help me than that will be great. I don’t know what to do. I am going to be in math class.

Answer 1

Jenica, maybe I can help.

I’m sure you know the word “less”. If you had 31 dollars, and a friend had 43, would you be happy to trade with your friend? Yes. Would your friend be happy? No, because 31 is LESS than 43.

In math, we say that like this:

31 < 43

because we read from left to right, “31 is less than 43”

On the other hand, your friend sees the flip side, having 43, while you only have 31.

In math, we say

43 > 31

and we read it as “43 is greater than 31”, because we read it left to right.

How can you tell how to read those symbols? Both < and > have a wide open side and a pointy side.

In both cases, the wide side is next to the larger (aka “greater”) number, and the pointy side is next to the smaller number.

Does that help?