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Does the associative property apply to subtraction?

1 Answer

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Answer:

No, not necessarily, maybe in a few special cases, but not all.

Explanation:

The associative property only applies to addition and multiplication. Not even division counts. The reason is, because the associative rule states that the order of grouping the numbers does not matter.

If you take a look at any subtraction problem, right away you can tell order does matter, otherwise if you tried to subtract a bigger number from a smaller number, you'd only get a negative number. Mean while if you subtract a smaller number from a bigger number, you'd get a whole different answer.

In addition/multiplication, it doesn't matter what size or order the number is, it will equal the same thing.

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