The figure on the right shows the feasible set of a nutrition problem and the straight line of all combinations of rice and soybeans for which the cost is 42 cents.

This law is sometimes called the grouping property. as you can see, regardless of how the numbers are grouped, the answer is still 13. the associative law of multiplication is similar to the same law for addition. it says that no matter how you group numbers you are multiplying together, you will get the same answer.