The way he lays out his math had me a little confused at first but I blame it on my lack of coffee
When I was in grade school I remember a teacher told me that if you think about the greater and less than signs as alligators eating the bigger numbers… To this day, it’s still what I see
My teacher put a kid with dwarfism and tall kid side by side in front of the black board and drew a line between the tops of their heads, and then another still downwards but in the opposite horizontal direction. Thus the pointy end always faces the smaller thing, while the open end always faces the larger thing. Doesn’t work so well in english, though since it kind of implies people with dwarfism are “less than” people without the condition. In the language it was taught the verbs used for < and > are also used when comparing heights.