• If you read the wikipedia article

    …which isn’t a Maths textbook!

    also stating the distributive law, literally in the first sentence

    Except what it states is the Distributive property, not The Distributive Law. If I call a Koala a Koala Bear, that doesn’t mean it’s a bear - it just means I used the wrong name. And again, not a Maths textbook - whoever wrote that demonstrably doesn’t know the difference between the property and the law.

    This is something you learn in elementary school

    No it isn’t. This is a year 7 topic. In Primary School they are only given bracketed terms without a coefficient (thus don’t need to know The Distributive Law).

    be assured that I am sufficiently qualified

    No, I’m not assured of that when you’re quoting wikipedia instead of Maths textbooks, and don’t know the difference between The Distributive Property and The Distributive Law, nor know which grade this is taught to.

    Wikipedia is not intrinsically less accurate than maths textbooks

    BWAHAHAHAHA! You know how many wrong things I’ve seen in there? And I’m not even talking about Maths! Ever heard of edit wars? Whatever ends up on the page is whatever the admin believes. Wikipedia is “like an encyclopedia” in the same way that Madonna is like a virgin.

    but you are misunderstanding them

    And yet you have failed to point out how/why/where. In all of your comments here, you haven’t even addressed The Distributive Law at all.

    Whether you write it as a(b+c) = ab + ac or as a*(b+c) = ab + ac is insubstantial

    And neither of those examples is about The Distributive Law - they are both to do with The Distributive Property (and you wrote the first one wrong anyway - it’s a(b+c)=(ab+ac). Premature removal of brackets is how many people end up with the wrong answer).

    • rasensprenger@feddit.de
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      8 months ago

      Let me quote from the article:

      “In mathematics, the distributive property of binary operations is a generalization of the distributive law, which asserts that the equality x*(y+z) = x*y + x*z is always true in elementary algebra.”

      This is the first sentence of the article, which clearly states that the distributive property is a generalization of the distributive law, which is then stated.

      Make sure you can comprehend that before reading on.

      To make your misunderstanding clear: You seem to be under the impression that the distributive law and distributive property are completely different statements, where the only difference in reality is that the distributive property is a property that some fields (or other structures with a pair of operations) may have, and the distributive law is the statement that common algebraic structures like the integers and the reals adhere to the distributive property.

      I don’t know which school you went to or teach at, but this certainly is not 7th year material.

      • which clearly states that the distributive property is a generalization of the distributive law

        Let me say again, people calling a Koala a Koala bear doesn’t mean it actually is a bear. Stop reading wikipedia and pick up a Maths textbook.

        You seem to be under the impression that the distributive law and distributive property are completely different statements

        It’s not an impression, it’s in Year 7 Maths textbooks.

        this certainly is not 7th year material

        And yet it appears in every Year 7 textbook I’ve ever seen.

        Looks like we’re done here.

        • rasensprenger@feddit.de
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          7 months ago

          If you don’t want to see why you’re wrong that’s your thing, but I tried. I can just say, try to re-read the math textbook you took pictures of, and try to understand it.