a > b means 'a' is greater than 'b'. In nursery, the book told us that the > sign is a crocodile. As you know, crocodiles would prefer to eat more, so naturally the crocodile would want to eat the bigger number. I wondered why the crocodile would prefer eating 9 to eating 8, since 8 is "bigger" than 9! (I dunno if you can see the logic behind it... one way to put it, is that when you writing 8 involves more writing than writing 9)

Anyway, one day in nursery, for some reason, I got the impression that the crocodile didn't want to eat so much. And as a result, I scored badly for that piece of work.

So, as an extension to that concept...

a >> b. 'a' is so much bigger than 'b' that some crocodile would rather bite another crocodile's tail to snatch for a bit of 'a'.

a ><> b. a is sufficiently bigger than b for two crocodiles to want to eat it, but not enough to fight for it.

a <> b. Both a and b are so small that the crocodiles can't be bothered.

> a b<. The two crocodiles hate each other so much that they totally don't care about the food.