FOIL Method - The Distributive Law

The Distributive Law

The FOIL method is equivalent to a two-step process involving the distributive law:

\begin{align} (a+b)(c+d) &{} = a(c+d) + b(c+d) \\ &{}= ac + ad + bc + bd \end{align}

In the first step, the is distributed over the addition in first binomial. In the second step, the distributive law is used to simplify each of the two terms. Note that this process involves a total of three applications of the distributive property.

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