You may recall that multiplying numbers is repetitive addition. It means you are adding a number to itself a number of times. Here is the strategy for performing multiplication between negative and positive numbers.
Multiply the two numbers as you would if they were both positive numbers, except the result is negative.
Multiplication has many interesting properties. One property in mathematics relates to the order of the numbers. Multiplying 2 x 3 will result in 6. Also, 3 x 2 is 6. This observation isn't exclusive to just 3 and 2. It works for any two Integers. In fact, if you examine the Table of M x N Values, you will see that m x n = m x n for all the values in the table.
When you multiply a negative number times a positive number, you can simply use the same strategy as dealing with Positive x Negative, which you learned the previous section.
Let us examine two quick examples that use this new strategy.
Example #1: -5 x 7
-5 x 7 = 7 x -5. So, if 7 x -5 = -35, so must -5 x 7. Therefore, -5 x 7 = -35.
Example #2: -4 x 2
-4 x 2 = -8 for the same reason that 2 x -4 = -8 because a negative times a positive is a negative.
To help you learn other skills with Integers, use the links below.