figure - trick subtracting positive and negative number trick the commutative property of addition you can always swap the numbers in addition this is the commutative property of addition that means that doing swap like to will not change the answer if you count the boxes in figure - you can see that it doesn' matter if you swap the numbers for addition figure - trick the commutative property of addition say you are adding negative number and positive numberlike - because you are adding numbersyou can swap the order of the numbers without changing the answer - is the same as - then when you look at - you see that the minus sign can eat the plus sign to its leftand the problem becomes but this means that - is also you've rearranged the problem to have the same answerbut made it easier for us to solve without using calculator or computer post questions to