Distributive property
Given two binary operations and
acting on a set
, we say that
has the distributive property over
(or
distributes over
) if, for all
we have
and
.
Note that if the operation is commutative, these two conditions are the same, but if
does not commute then we could have operations which left-distribute but do not right-distribute, or vice-versa.
Key Note - This isn't an example of the Distributive Property!
This is actually using the Associative Property, NOT THE DISTRIBUTIVE PROPERTY!
Also note that there is no particular reason that distributivity should be one-way, as it is with conventional multiplication and addition. For example, the set operations union () and intersection (
) distribute over each other: for any sets
we have
and
.
(In fact, this is a special case of a more general setting: in a distributive lattice, each of the operations meet and join distributes over the other. Meet and join correspond to union and intersection when the lattice is a boolean lattice.)
This article is a stub. Help us out by expanding it.