👉 The term "associative" in mathematics refers to a binary operation that is commutative (meaning for all elements a and b, a
b = b
a) but not necessarily associative. This means that when you apply this operation on two different elements, the result will be the same regardless of the order in which they are applied.
For example, consider the following operations:
1. Addition: x + y = y + x for all x and y
2. Multiplication: x