So far, we’ve covered properties that work for both addition and multiplication. Today, we’re going to look at the identity property. Both addition and multiplication have an identity property, but it works differently for each operation.
The idea behind the identity property, regardless of whether you’re adding or multiplying, is that you can do something to a number and its value won’t change.
In addition, the identity property adds something to the number without changing the number. The only number you can add to anything without changing is 0, so the identity property for addition looks like:
a + 0 = a
When you add 0, you literally add nothing, and so the number remains the same.
For multiplication, we have to find a number to multiply numbers by that won’t change the value of the numbers. Well, we know from our math facts that anything times 1 is itself, so the identity property for multiplication looks like:
a * 1 = a
These both may seem obvious now, but as you get into higher levels of math, both can make complex problems a lot simpler to tackle.
Tomorrow, we’ll look at the transitive property.
[...] The Identity Property [...]
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