My friend Allison (MIT graduate in Mathematics) recently explained why she struggled with inequalities as a child.

To help students remember which way the inequality sign pointed, the teacher drew an alligator mouth. You know the lesson. Here’s an example from songsforteaching.com:

And the song lyrics:

And one from GradeAMathHelp.com

And this simple shortcut or trick was the cause of all of Allison’s troubles with inequalities.

She explained: “everyone knows, the bigger fish eats the small fish”: