The More Than Symbol in Math

What Does The More Than Symbol Mean in Math?

Let us understand the significance of the ‘more than’ symbol in Maths with a simple story.

One day, Priyanka purchased notebooks of the same size in stock from the wholesale shop to sell them at a profit. However, the wholesale retailer played a trick and gave her notebooks of different sizes. When Priyanka reached her shop to check the notebooks before setting them on the shelves, she found that wholesale retailers had packed the notebooks of varying sizes. Now, here comes a dilemma! She found notebooks starting from the size of 20, 18, 15, 14, 13, and 11. 

Her cousin Niya gets confused to see the notebooks of various sizes and gives Priyanka an idea to categorize them as per their sizes. Following her advice, Priyanka started arranging the books of the sizes starting from 20, as it was more than the size of 18; 18 as it was more than the size of 15; 15 that was more than 14; 14 that was more than 13; and lastly 13 that was more than 11.

So, what do you understand from the above context, and what is the concept of more than in math? We will understand all about it in detail.

Concept of More Than With Examples

To understand the concept of more than we need to arrange the items in an order. Since maths relies more on using mathematical symbols than on theoretical long texts, we are going to understand the concept of more than with a symbol for the example mentioned above.

In the above example, we used the term more than often. So, let us replace it with a mathematical symbol.

• 20 > 18 > 15 > 14 > 13 > 11

Here, ‘>’ symbol stands for more than or greater than. Here, we have used descending order. In descending order, the values are arranged in decreasing order, starting from the greatest number and ending with the lowest number. 

Now, if we reverse the sign, we have:

• 11 < 13 < 14 < 15 < 18 < 20

So, again if we look at the order from the right-end, we find that 20 is more than 18, 18 is more than 15, then 15 is more than 14, 14 is more than 13, and finally, 13 is more than 11.

Example 1: Let us assume that students of Class 6B have the following scores in a test cricket match.

• 56

• 80

• 67

• 84

• 65

• 74

Now, let us arrange the numbers by using the concept of the ‘greater than’ operator.

Here, the order is as follows.

84 is greater than 80, 80 is greater than 74, 74 is greater than 67, 67 is greater than 65, and 65 is greater than 56.

Now, to minimize our efforts of writing, we replace greater than with ‘>’ sign, which also means the same, so let us write it as:

• 84 > 80 > 74 > 67 > 65 > 56

Example 2: Niyama bought cakes of various flavors costing as follows.

Cake1 of  Rs. 400, cake2 of Rs. 340, cake3 of Rs. 530, and cake4 of Rs. 890. 

Now, she arranges these cakes as per the size starting from a higher price to a lower price, which is:

• c4 > c3 > c1 > c2 

Here, on changing the order of price, the sign also changes in the following way:

• c2 < c1 < c3 < c4

So, this is how we can arrange any items/objects in terms of more than ‘>’ by taking various real-life examples.