955 B
955 B
categories | tags | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Prime factorisation
Prime factorisation is the activity of expressing a composite number as the unique product of prime numbers. There are two main approaches to this:
-
- factor* trees
- repeated division by two
Factor trees: we take a number
n
and break it down into two factors ofn
. We then repeat this process with the resulting factors working recursively until the numbers we are left with are primes.
The prime factors of 27 are 2, 3, 3
it doesn't matter which products we choose as the interim factors, we should
always reach the same outcome: