The associative property is a property of some binary operations in mathematics, which means that rearranging the parentheses in an expression will not change the result. Specifically, the associative property states that the sum or the product of three or more numbers does not change if they are grouped in a different way. Here are some key points about the associative property:

• Associativity is not the same as commutativity, which addresses whether the order of two operands affects the result.
• Associative operations are abundant in mathematics, and many algebraic structures explicitly require their binary operations to be associative.
• However, many important and interesting operations are non-associative, such as subtraction, exponentiation, and the vector cross product.
• The associative property is applicable to addition and multiplication, but not to subtraction and division.
• The associative property can be expressed as a × (b × c) = (a × b) × c and a + (b + c) = (a + b) + c.

Overall, the associative property is an important concept in mathematics that helps us understand how numbers can be grouped together in different ways without changing the result.