Commutative law
In mathematics, a binary operation is commutative if changing the order of the operands does not change the result. It is a fundamental property of many binary operations, and many mathematical proofs depend on it. Most familiar as the name of the property that says "3 + 4 = 4 + 3" or "2 × 5 = 5 × 2", the property can also be used in more advanced settings. The name is needed because there are operations, such as division and subtraction, that do not have it (for example, "3 − 5 ≠ 5 − 3"); such operations are not commutative, or noncommutative operations. The idea that simple operations, such as multiplication and addition of numbers, are commutative was for many years implicitly assumed and the property was not named until the 19th century when mathematics started to become formalized. A corresponding property exists for binary relations; a binary relation is said to be symmetric if the relation applies regardless of the order of its operands; for example, equality is symmetric as two equal mathematical objects are equal regardless of the order of the two.
The commutative property (or commutative law) is a property generally associated with binary operations and functions. If the commutative property holds for a pair of elements under a certain binary operation then the two elements are said to commute under that operation.
The term "commutative" is used in several related senses.
Two well-known examples of commutative binary operations:
Some noncommutative binary operations:
Subtraction is noncommutative, since .
...
Wikipedia