Introduction to Inequalities
Inequality tells us about the relative size of values.
Mathematics is not always about "equals", sometimes we only know that something is greater or less than.
Example: Alex and Billy have a race, and Billy wins!
What do we know?
We don't know how fast they ran, but we do know that Billy was faster than Alex:
Billy was faster than Alex
We can write that down like this:
b > a
(Where "b" means how fast Billy was, ">" means "greater than", and "a" means how fast Alex was)
We call things like that inequalities (because they are not "equal")
Greater or Less Than
The two most common inequalities are:
|
Symbol |
Words |
Example Use |
|---|---|---|
| > |
greater than |
5 > 2 |
| < |
less than |
7 < 9 |
They are easy to remember: the "small" end always points to the smaller number, like this:
Greater Than Symbol: BIG > small
Example: Alex plays in the under 15s soccer. How old is Alex?
We don't know exactly how old Alex is, because it doesn't say "equals"
But we do know "less than 15", so we can write:
Age < 15
The small end points to "Age" because the age is smaller than 15.
... Or Equal To!
We can also have inequalities that include "equals", like:
|
Symbol |
Words |
Example Use |
|---|---|---|
| ≥ |
greater than or equal to |
x ≥ 1 |
| ≤ |
less than or equal to |
y ≤ 3 |
Example: you must be 13 or older to watch a movie.
The "inequality" is between your age and the age of 13.
Your age must be "greater than or equal to 13", which is written:
Age ≥ 13
Comparing Values
Practice >, < and = with Compare Numbers to 10
Learn more about Inequalities at Less Than or Greater Than