The commutative property states that you can invert the order of the terms of a sum:

So, if you start with

Applying the commutative property you'll get

If
and
, separate variables in the differential equation to get

Integrate both sides:

Use the initial condition to solve for
:

Then the particular solution to the initial value problem is

(A)
When you write a function in the form
, y is the dependent variable, and x is the independent variable.
So, if b is the independent variable, it means that we have to solve the expression for r.
To do so, we perform the following steps: start with

Add 12 to both sides

Divide both sides by 4:

So, we wrote the expression in the form
, which means that r is the dependent variable and b is the independent variable, as requested.