Notes: Distributive property is one of key links in elementary school maths. Indeed, in my opinion, if you really understand three concepts: fractions, negative numbers and the distributive property before you graduate from elementary school, you are good to go to middle school maths.
- How to group things in different ways, array or matrix. Or how to detect patters from different angles?
- Common factor, linked to factorization in either numbers and fractions in arithmetics or expressions with unknown terms in algebra.
- Operation orders
- Link addition/subtraction with multiplication/division. In essence, this property help us counting/calculating in whatever convenient way we like.
- This concept requires several steps of thinking. It is a little bit more abstract and is no longer straight forward like addition or division. That is, in order to grasp and to use this property, you might encounter some struggles in your brain. But after this struggle, you will like this property and you might start to have fun in maths.
- what other maths concept does the property make you think of?
Exercises
- 10003 x 25 =
- 98 x 7 =
- Simplify the expressions using the distributive property: (a + b ) x 2; 12 x (6 – c); (9+x) / 3