Having them lined up like this makes them easier to count. You've got four rows of meebs, with 3 meebs in each row. So all together that's 4 times 3, which equals 12. From where you're standing you ...

The array can be shown as 5 groups of 3 showing that 5 x 3 = 15. Or it could be shown as 3 groups of 5 showing that 3 x 5 = 15. This demonstrates that multiplication is commutative. Image caption, ...