The associative property of addition states that you can move the terms that are inside the parentheses and still have the expression remain true. So, in the answer above, I moved 5 out of the parentheses and x into the parentheses. No matter the value of x the value of the expression will remain the same
Examples and Proof
Another example of the associative property could be (1+6)+3 = 1+(6+3). To prove this statement we can evaluate each side of the expression.
First, let's do (1+6)+3
(1+6)+3
(7)+3
10
Next, let's do 1+(6+3)
1+(6+3)
1+(9)
10
As you can see both of these expressions are the same, thus proving that the associative property works in this situation.
