📢650 pages | Bundle Pack Printable Multiplication Math Worksheets |16500 Questions with Answer Keys

In math, multiplication is the method of finding the product of two or more numbers. It is a primary arithmetic operation that is used quite often in real life. Multiplication is used when we need to combine groups of equal sizes. Let us learn more about multiplication in this page.

Multiplication is an operation that represents the basic idea of repeated addition of the same number. The numbers that are multiplied are called the factors and the result that is obtained after the multiplication of two or more numbers is known as the product of those numbers. Multiplication is used to simplify the task of repeated addition of the same number.

Example: If there are 6 boxes of cupcakes and each box has 9 cupcakes, find the total number of cupcakes.

Solution: We can solve this question by addition but it would take longer to add these to get the answer. That is, 9 + 9 + 9 + 9 + 9 + 9 = 54 cupcakes. In other words, when we have larger numbers to work upon, then multiplication is useful.

Now, let us use multiplication to solve this problem. We will multiply the number of boxes with the number of cupcakes in each box. If we multiply 6 × 9, we will get the total number of cupcakes, which is 6 × 9 = 54 cupcakes. Thus, we can see that we get the same result in a shorter period of time. This is the reason why multiplication is also termed as repeated addition.

In mathematics, we have different symbols. The multiplication symbol is one of the commonly used math symbols. In the example given above, we learnt about the multiplication of two numbers 6 and 9. If we observe the expression of multiplication (6 × 9 = 54), we can see that the symbol (×) connects the two numbers and completes the given expression. Apart from the cross symbol (×), multiplication is also denoted by the mid-line dot operator (⋅), and by the asterisk sign (*).