associative

adj

1. Pertaining to, resulting from, or characterised by association; capable of associating; tending to associate or unite.

   “At present conditioning is viewed as a special case of associative learning which provides an animal (and human being alike) with die ability to discover, memorize, retrieve, and use relationships between signals and reinforcers and also to control rewards and aversive events.”

2. Such that, for any operands a,b and c, (a*b)*c=a*(b*c); (of a ring, etc.) whose multiplication operation is associative.

   “Perhaps it is an advantage of the "associative algebraic geometry" we have tried to develop in foregoing chapters that it is independent of braidings and further generalizations because it will remain valid as long as the corresponding "function"-rings constructed in these theories are associative algebras.”

   “It is now generally accepted that the representation theory of associative algebras traces its origin to Hamilton's description of the complex numbers by pairs of real numbers.”

   “In this section we develop the basic theory of normed algebras, putting special emphasis on the case of complete normed unital associative complex algebras.”

   “The associativity of OR and AND is not at all obvious. It is tempting to assume that because OR and AND are commutative that they must be associative also. This is not the case, however, and some commutative Boolean operators are not associative. Examples include NAND and NOR.”

3. Addressable by a key more complex than an integer index.

   “AWK's associative arrays may be indexed by strings.”

   “Associative memories were once given considerable attention.”