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Lesson 51: Less/Greater Than or Equal To, and Not Equal To
This easy lesson introduces you to some symbols that you'll see again and again.
You've already seen the less than (<) and the greater than symbols (>). Sometimes in math we need to show that a number or a variable is "less than or equal to," or "greater than or equal to." We also sometimes need to show "not equal to."
Here is an example: k ≥ 7. This symbol means that k can be any number greater than 7, or equal to 7. Acceptable values for k would be 7, 14, 295, one million, etc.
Another example is m ≤ 14. This symbol means that m can be any number less than 14, or equal to 14. Acceptable values for m would be 14, 6, 3, 0, etc.
Sometimes we need to show that a variable cannot equal a certain number. For example, we can write h ≠ 5, to show that h cannot equal 5. It can be any other number at all, but just not 5.
For now just memorize these symbols. Later you'll see how they work in harder math.
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