Distributive Property

The distributive property describes how multiplication interacts with addition, stating that multiplying a number by the sum of two other numbers always gives the same result as multiplying the number by each of them separately and then adding the two products, a rule that holds throughout elementary algebra. For example, 2 times the quantity 1 plus 3 gives the same result as 2 times 1 plus 2 times 3, both equal to 8. The property is essential to algebra because it forms part of the definition of most algebraic structures that carry both addition and multiplication, including polynomials, matrices, rings and fields, and a version of it also appears in Boolean algebra and mathematical logic. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/