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Distributive property review

Review the basics of the distributive property, and try some practice problems.

What is the distributive property?

The distributive property says that in a multiplication problem, when one factor is rewritten as the sum of two numbers, the product doesn't change.
Using the distributive property allows us to solve two simpler multiplication problems.
Example:
We can change 4×12 into 4×(10+2).
The 4 gets distributed to the 10 and 2 and the problem changes to:
(4×10)+(4×2)
The array of dots on the left shows (4×10). The array of dots on the right shows (4×2).
Now we can add the expressions to find the total.
(4×10)+(4×2)
=40+8
=48
Want to learn more about the distributive property? Check out this video.
Want to know why the distributive property is helpful? Check out this article.

Practice

Problem 1
The dots below represent 12×2. They are broken up into two groups.
Which expression can we use to calculate the total number of dots?
Choose 1 answer:

Want to try more problems like this? Check out this exercise.

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