Distributivity
Distributivity is like sharing your toys with your friends. Imagine you have three toys: a ball, a car, and a teddy bear. You have two friends, Jack and Jill, who also want to play with your toys.
If you want to share your toys with Jack and Jill, distributivity tells you that you can split them up in two groups, then add the groups together to get the same result as if you'd added each toy to Jack and Jill separately.
For example, you could put the ball and the car together in one group, and the teddy bear by itself in another group. Then you could give the first group to Jack and the second group to Jill. Jack gets two toys, while Jill gets one toy, but together they have all your toys. That's distributivity!
This idea is important in math, too. For instance, if you have two numbers, say, 2 and 4, and you want to multiply them by 3, you can use distributivity to make the calculation easier. Instead of multiplying 2 and 4 by 3 separately, you can add them together first, so you would do:
(2 + 4) x 3 = 6 x 3 = 18
That's the same as doing:
2 x 3 + 4 x 3 = 6 + 12 = 18
This method works no matter what numbers you're using, and it's faster than calculating each number separately. So distributivity helps you share your toys and make your math homework easier!
If you want to share your toys with Jack and Jill, distributivity tells you that you can split them up in two groups, then add the groups together to get the same result as if you'd added each toy to Jack and Jill separately.
For example, you could put the ball and the car together in one group, and the teddy bear by itself in another group. Then you could give the first group to Jack and the second group to Jill. Jack gets two toys, while Jill gets one toy, but together they have all your toys. That's distributivity!
This idea is important in math, too. For instance, if you have two numbers, say, 2 and 4, and you want to multiply them by 3, you can use distributivity to make the calculation easier. Instead of multiplying 2 and 4 by 3 separately, you can add them together first, so you would do:
(2 + 4) x 3 = 6 x 3 = 18
That's the same as doing:
2 x 3 + 4 x 3 = 6 + 12 = 18
This method works no matter what numbers you're using, and it's faster than calculating each number separately. So distributivity helps you share your toys and make your math homework easier!