Using a mnemonic should be an absolute last resort used for people whose brains don’t cotton on to pattern recognition in the same way as others (I don’t mean that disparagingly, I understand that some people just don’t “get” stuff), it should not be the go-to explanation the first time someone asks what a symbol means. The answers to this thread suggest to me that school teachers are using silly arbitrary images to explain a non arbitrary symbol and in the process they are complicating matters.
It helped me remember.
The OP probably doesn’t actually care whether it is arbitrary. He just wanted an easy way to remember. I don’t think remembering whether a symbol is arbitrary or not is no easier than remembering what the symbol means.
Yeah, that didn’t sound disparaging at all.
For “<”, whatever’s on the left is “less than” whatever’s on the right, whether they are numbers or loudness.
For “>”, whatever’s on the left is “more than” whatever’s on the right, whether they are numbers or loudness.
That’s useful shorthand, and if it works for you, fine, but you’re not using the symbol in its standard mathematical meaning of “is less than.” That may seem nitpicky, but I’ve seen plenty of math students get confused between “less than” and “is less than” and try to use the < symbol when trying to translate something like “the width is three inches less than the length” into algebraic symbols.
I can’t think of a standard mathematical context where a < or > doesn’t come between two numbers (or expressions that represent numbers).
I recognise that everyone is different and you need to be able to tailor explanations to the individual, I have some pretty big weaknesses myself. But by assuming the person you’re explaining to won’t “get” an underlying logic to something and therefore not bothering to explain the underlying logic you are doing them a great disservice. Explain the logic to them, if they don’t get it then start talking about crocodiles.
Look at it this way, if someone asks you how to remember what 302 plus 457 equals, do you launch into a story about a rabbit with a litter of 302 babies and another rabbit with 457 babies and how they fell in love and got married and ended up with 759 babies, which ultimately just requires them to wrote learn the number “759”, or do you teach them how to add the numbers 1 through to 9 and then have them apply what they’ve learned to the problem they have?
When someone starts a thread asking about an easy way to remember something, I like to tell them an easy way to remember something, not any underlying theory, since that wasn’t the question.
You don’t need to remember if it is arbitrary or not, you just need to understand the symbol. It’s the difference between understanding and wrote memory. Always go for understanding if you can.
Did it help you remember because you were unable to understand it, or did it help you remember because no one bothered helping you to understand it?
Those little smilies next to the box I’m typing in. Do you need to “remember” what each one means or do you understand that the represent different facial expressions? Is it a problem having to “remember” that those symbols are not arbitrary? Is it easier for the general population to remember those symbols by wrote learning or understanding that they represent facial expressions? If you found out that teachers were explaining symbols like those in terms of arbitrary stories what would you think? (The 
is showing his teeth because he is really happy that he has just been to the dentist.)
The easiest most non convoluted way of remembering which number goes on which side of the < symbol is that the smaller number goes on the smaller side and the larger number goes on the larger side. That way the explanation is contained wholly in the symbol itself and doesn’t require any additional ideas. you also have the benefit of a single explanation covering three symbols, <, =, and >.
when you learn something by forceful repetition, it is called learning by rote.
but in this case the easy way is to explain what the symbol means. the OP was obviously taught (or only remembered) to link bigger than/smaller than to the symbols instead of the underlying logic, which was likely why he was confused. if this fails there are plenty of alternatives in the thread.
rote learning
Damn, ninja’d.
And there is one of my weaknesses, I’m crap with spelling and grammar.
Gotta agree.
Big side, big number.
Small side, small number.
The only real confusion arises when you are comparing quantities of different signs. The statement,
-400<2
can be a little counterintuitive. But this is related more to concepts of signed numbers than anything to do with the conventions of the <> symbols.
And I am arguing, quite explicitly, that it does hurt to try to use a mnemonic for something like this. It is not only unnecessary, it is positively confusing. If people find this symbol’s meaning hard to remember it is because they have attempted to remember it via over-elaborate, ambiguous mnemonics and/or inappropriate, misleading metaphors about “pointing”. Your sort of redundant “solution” to the problem is actually the cause of the problem (for those people who actually do have a problem).
When I learned these signs in grade school, I immediately got the fact that the larger number is always where the lines are a greater distance apart. But at the very beginning, for a short while I got confused as how to read them (at least to myself). I’d read “8>2” as “8 is greater than 2”, but I’d also read “2<8” that exact same way! They mean the same thing, of course. And I soon got the words straight.
Of course. Because you tried to learn them by rote.
Most likely :D!
This is a simple enough concept that you shouldn’t need more than one way to look at it. You don’t need Pac Man, alligators, King Kong or crooked letter L’s.
One side of the symbol is big, that’s where the big number goes. That’s it. That’s the whole enchilada. Big side, big number. A 4 year old can grasp that.
In fact, this morning I’m going to try to teach my son these symbols, he’s in kindergarten, I will post back with the results.
Really? Which end of this volume slider should logically produce the biggest sound?
I come to report some success with the concept of < and > with a kindergartener who was eating breakfast and interested in doing something else on the iPad.
Drew the following on a piece of paper
He remembered the equals sign, and thought the others were arrows, which makes sense. I told him the big number goes where the lines are far apart, the little number where the lines are close together. So he drew his own
When I asked him what he was trying to say with it, he realized the numbers were backwards and fixed it. I consider self correction after a 2 minute lesson in a completely new topic a measure of success.
Then my wife came in, saw what we were doing, and said
totally ruining the whole experiment.