Incrementing is a strategy used for addition. The idea of incrementing is to add one of the numbers in pieces. We typically do this using nice numbers. This strategy works because addition is both commutative and associative.

As an example, let’s consider 986 + 159. In this case, we can see that adding 4 gets us to 990, and adding another 10 gets us to 1000. Thus, we have added 14 of the 159. This means we have 145 left to add. Adding this to the 1000 gives a solution of 1145.

This is not the only way to increment in this problem. The idea is to add one of the numbers in pieces, but it doesn’t matter how you break that number down.