Jerome tries to find the value of expression 3 - 6+5 by first applying the commutative property. he writes the expression as 3 -5+6. explain what is wrong with jerome's approch.

Jerome is not gonna arrive at the right answer because he subtracted 5 and added 6.....when he was supposed to subtract 6 and add 5...he got the signs mixed up. If he was going to apply the commutative property, he should have done this : 3 + 5 - 6

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DelcieRiveria DelcieRiveria · Answer 2 · 2018-10-10T14:44:25+02:00

Solution: The commutative property applied by jerome is not correct because he did not consider the negative sign of 6 at the time of applying commutative property.

Explanation:

The given expression is [tex]3-6+5[/tex].

In the above above expression there no need to apply commutative property. Jerome should add the positive terms and after that subtract the negative term. Using this method the value of the expression is 2.

He write it as [tex]3-5+6[/tex]. Which is not correct because the value of this expression is 4.

If he wants to apply commutative property then it is also possible but the signs of each term plays an important role in it.

[tex]3-6+5=3+(-6)+5[/tex]

Now we can use commutative law.

[tex]3+(-6)+5=3+5+(-6)\\3+(-6)+5=3+5-6\\3+(-6)+5=2[/tex]

Therefore, commutative property applies by jerome is not correct because he did not consider the negative sign of 6 at the time of applying commutative property.