In a community garden (shown to the right) you want to plant and fence in a vegetable garden that is adjacent to your friend's garden. You have at most 46 ft of fence, and the fence must surround all four sides of your garden. What are the possible lengths of your garden?

The answer is 49/16 or 3 1/16

This law is sometimes called the grouping property. as you can see, regardless of how the numbers are grouped, the answer is still 13. the associative law of multiplication is similar to the same law for addition. it says that no matter how you group numbers you are multiplying together, you will get the same answer.