The distributive law says that:
a(b + c) = ab + ac
Suppose you have a problem like:
-4 - 5
What does it have to do with the distributive law? Well,
-4 - 5
= (-4) + (-5)
= (-1)(4) + (-1)(5)
This is like ab + ac with a = -1. Now we can factor out the -1 to get:(-1)(4 + 5)
which is same thing as
-(4 + 5) = -9
because the 1 is understood when we write it this way.
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