SOLUTION: What is an "additive inverse," "associative," "distributive," "identity of multiplication," "communitive of addition," "communitive of multiplication."

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Question 4966: What is an "additive inverse," "associative," "distributive," "identity of multiplication," "communitive of addition," "communitive of multiplication."
Answer by Abbey(339) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
I'm sure your textbook has formal definitions, but this might help clarify those:
The additive inverse of a number just means the number you will add to your number to make it equal to zero.
Example:
the additive inverse of 3 is -3, because 3+ -3=0
The associative property means that it doesn't matter (with addition or multiplication) which way you solve it. You can remember this property because the word associate means "who they are hanging out with in the parentheses".
Example for Addition:
(A+B)+C will give you the same answer as A+(B+C)
We can see this by putting numbers into an equation:
(3+2)+4=3+(2+4)
5+4=3+6
9=9
Multiplication:
(3*2)*4=(3*(2*4)
6*4=3*8
24=24
The distributive property means that you can solve what is in the parentheses first or multiply by what is outside the parentheses and then solve:
3*(2+5)can be rewritten as 3*(7) OR (3*2)+(3*5) - both answers will equal 21
Identity of multiplication is a way to say that we can put the number one in any form we want to multiply a number, and it doesn't change the value of the number.
Example:
The number 3 is still valued at 3 even if we multiply it by and it looks like
The commutative of addition and multiplication (Think of the word "commute" - to go from one place to another)means that we can pick up parts of an equation and move it around and it doesn't change the value of the equation:
38+2a+12 is the same value as 12+38+2a
Multiplication:
38*2a*12 is the exact same as 2a*38*12.
Hope this helps!