The Magic of the Associative Property

The magic of the associative property is that you can break it up pretty much arbitrarily. If you're going to be merging 2 sorted lists into a larger sorted list, you are going to pick the lowest one on each list. These things can be done in parallel. You can break it down almost arbitrarily. So it doesn't matter. Another example is tracking your many hours or you work every day. This gives us tremendous amounts of flexibility. And all of that is because plus is associative or merge two sorted lists is associativeor merge two hash maps is associative.