Remembering how to compare whole numbers is going to help us compare decimals in this lesson. Let's try this practice problem to review.
Which symbol, greater than (\gt) or less than (\lt) will make the following statements true?
91 \, ⬚ \, 97
682 \, ⬚ \, 782
\gt means "greater than".
\lt means "less than".
We can use place value columns to help us compare numbers with decimals. If we have 0.342, and we are comparing it to 0.458, we know that 342 is smaller than 458, so 342 thousandths is smaller than 458 thousandths. In this video we work through some examples, and see how we can compare decimals.
Fill in the box the greater than (\gt) or less than (\lt) symbol that would make this number sentence true. 0.082 \, ⬚ \, 0.088
We can use a place value table to compare decimals.
This video shows how to compare numbers that have many decimal places.
Fill in the box the greater than (\gt) or less than (\lt) symbol that would make this number sentence true. 0.754 \, ⬚ \, 0.6094
When using a place value table to compare decimals we can start at the place value column furthest to the left and work to the right, comparing the values in each column to work out the bigger/smaller number.
Or, we can add zeros at the end of a decimal so we can compare the same number of place value columns. For example, if we wanted to compare 0.45 and 0.672, we could write 0.45 as 0.450. This means we can compare thousandths to thousandths.