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About Joe's article multiplication is not commutative
01-31-2014, 02:38 PM
Post: #6
RE: About Joe's article multiplication is not commutative
(01-31-2014 02:25 PM)Paul Berger (Canada) Wrote:  
(01-31-2014 01:24 PM)Werner Wrote:  'Multiplication is commutative' means a*b is equal to b*a.
That holds for floating-point multiplications as well.
What Joe said was (a*b)*c is not necessarily equal to a*(b*c), which is not the same thing.
Werner

The property you are describing is associative, so I found with a bit of quick research earlier, and yeas multiplication is associative. (3x2)x5 = 3x(2x5) but it breaks on calculators because of the limits of precision and that I think is the point of Joe's article.

...which suggests the title "Multiplication is not associative" is more fitting than "Multiplication is not commutative"

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RE: About Joe's article multiplication is not commutative - Han - 01-31-2014 02:38 PM



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