Laws of addition
The term “laws of addition” usually refers to three properties that hold true for all real numbers when performing addition:
- Commutative Property: This law states that the order in which you add numbers doesn’t affect the sum. In simpler terms, it doesn’t matter whether you add A + B or B + A, the result will always be the same.
Example: 3 + 5 = 5 + 3 = 8
- Associative Property: This law states that the way you group numbers when adding them doesn’t affect the sum. It doesn’t matter if you add groups within parentheses first or not, the end result will always be the same.
Example: (2 + 3) + 4 = 2 + (3 + 4) = 9
- Identity Property: This law states that adding zero to any number doesn’t change the value of the number. Zero acts as the “identity element” for addition.
Example: 0 + A = A, where A is any real number.