Is there a "greater than about" symbol?

Question

To indicate approximate equality, one can use ≃, ≅, ~, ♎, or ≒.

I need to indicate an approximate inequality. Specifically, I know A is greater than a quantity of approximately B.

Is there a way to succinctly express this mathematically?

If you like. I know anecdotally that steam plumes are visible on the fumarolic ice towers of Mt Erebus when the relative humidity goes above something like 20%. — foobarbecue, Aug 12 '15 at 20:25

wltrup · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-12T20:26:37.410

87

LaTeX has the symbols \lessapprox ($\lessapprox$) and \gtrapprox ($\gtrapprox$).

Incidentally, a long time ago I came across this awesome Short Math Guide for $\LaTeX$, a free pdf by the American Mathematical Society. Well-worth keeping it close by.

edited Aug 12 '15 at 20:26

answered Aug 12 '15 at 20:23

wltrup

4,073

2

Brilliant! I consistently underestimate LaTeX... and unicode for that matter... – foobarbecue Aug 12 '15 at 20:24
So I guess we'd use this if we knew our approximation wasn't very good, or if we couldn't reliably bound it? – 727 Aug 12 '15 at 20:24
@foobarbecue Glad you like it. I'd appreciate if you could accept my answer, if you're so inclined. Thanks. – wltrup Aug 12 '15 at 20:27
Been trying to, but there's a 10 minute minimum waiting time it seems. Four minutes to go. – foobarbecue Aug 12 '15 at 20:28
This symbol is not very common in my experience, so I would be careful to explain what you mean by it. – Jair Taylor Aug 12 '15 at 20:50
48

In addition, when you want only one tilde symbol, use \lessim and \gtrsim – Wouter Jan 27 '17 at 15:53
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Since the link for this math guide appears to no longer work, I here provide a link to the same document that does work (as of 1 March 2017) http://www.math.hkbu.edu.hk/TeX/short-math-guide.pdf – fp.monkey Mar 01 '17 at 19:02
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@Wouter that should be \lesssim with a triple s – civilstat Oct 27 '17 at 02:36
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These symbols are not available in vanilla latex; you need to use the package amssymb. – David Ketcheson May 03 '19 at 11:45
The link in the answer requires you to connect to a server. What's going on? – Benjamin Wang Apr 19 '21 at 10:29
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@DavidKetcheson one can just paste the symbols: ⪆, $\text{⪆}$ – Anixx May 01 '21 at 14:44
Pasting ⪆ or ⪆ produces "Unicode character ⪆ (U+2A86) not set up for use with LaTeX" for me. – user3810316 Mar 01 '24 at 17:13
As of 2024, the above links for the Short Math Guide were not working for me. This worked: https://tug.ctan.org/info/short-math-guide/short-math-guide.pdf – John1024 Jun 21 '24 at 22:55

Is there a "greater than about" symbol?

1 Answers1