generators are the elements and the relators are the commutators of pairs of elements Here, the commutator of two elements and is the product setting this product to the identity causes to so that and commute. More generally, if all pairs of generators commute, then all pairs of products of generators also commute. Therefore, the group generated by this presentation is abelian, and the relators of the presentation form a minimal set of relators needed to ensure that it is abelian. When the set of generators is finite, the presentation of a free abelian group is also finite, because there are only finitely many different commutators to include in the presentation. This fact, together with the fact that every subgroup of a free abelian group is free abelian (below) can be used to show that every finitely generated abelian group is finitely presented. For, if is finitely generated by a it is a quotient of the free abelian group over by a free abelian subgroup, the subgroup generated by the relators of the presentation But since this subgroup is itself free abelian, it is also finitely generated, and its basis (together with the commutators forms a finite set of relators for a presentation As a module The modules over the integers are defined similarly to vector spaces over the real numbers or rational numbers: they consist of systems of elements that can be added to each other, with an operation for scalar multiplication by integers that is compatible with this addition operation. Every abelian group may be considered as a module over the integers, with a scalar multiplication operation defined as follows: However, unlike vector spaces, not all abelian groups have a basis, hence the special name "free" for those that do. A free module is a module that can be represented as a direct sum over its base ring, so free abelian groups and free are equivalent concepts: each free abelian group is (with the multiplication operation above) a free and each free comes from a free abelian group in this way. As well as the direct sum, another way to combine free abelian groups is to use the tensor product of The tensor product of two free abelian groups is always free abelian, with a basis that is the Cartesian product of the bases for the two groups in the product. Many important properties of free abelian groups