The equation a(b + c) = ab + ac is an example of the distributive property in mathematics. This property states that when you multiply a number by a sum, you can distribute the multiplication to each addend inside the parentheses. Here, a is multiplied by both b and c , resulting in ab and ac . For instance, if a = 2 , b = 3 , and c = 4 , then 2(3 + 4) can be calculated as 2 \times 7 = 14 . Using the distributive property, you can also compute it as 2 \times 3 + 2 \times 4 = 6 + 8 = 14 . This shows that both methods yield the same result.