By breaking a number up into its factors, you can sometimes cancel out factors that aren’t really needed.
For now though, you just need to learn what factoring is and how to do it.
So let’s see another example. Let’s factor the number 24.
For this one, I think I’ll use my multiplication table.
Let’s see here… alright, well 4 times 6 is 24. So that means that 4 and 6 are factors of 24.
Now hold on… I’m sure some of you have seen that 3 times 8 is also 24.
And that’s true. We could have decided to factor 24 into 3 times 8 instead.
So which of the factors is right? Is is 4 and 6 or 3 and 8?
Actually, they’re both right. There can be more than one way to factor a number.
That’s one of the things that might make factoring a little confusing at first.
You’re used to having just one right answer,
because when you add, subtract, multiply or divide, there is just one right answer.
But when you factor (or un-multiply) a number, you might find that there’s more than one correct way you can do it.
So we can see that the number 24 has quite a few factors.
4 is a factor, 6 is a factor, 3 is a factor and 8 is a factor.
The fact that each of these numbers is a factor of 24 means that each of them can divide evenly into 24.
And when I say “divide evenly”, I mean that it will divide in without a remainder.
For example, if we take our first factor (4) and divide it into 24 using a calculator, our answer will be 6.
4 divides into 24 six times with no remainder.