25 lines
953 B
Markdown
25 lines
953 B
Markdown
---
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categories:
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- Mathematics
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tags:
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- prealgebra
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- factors
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- primes
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---
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### Prime factorisation
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Prime factorisation is the activity of expressing a composite number as the unique product of [prime numbers](Primes%20and%20composites.md). There are two main approaches to this:
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- - factor\* trees
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- repeated division by two
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> **Factor trees:** we take a number $n$ and break it down into two factors of $n$. We then repeat this process with the resulting factors working recursively until the numbers we are left with are primes.
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_The prime factors of 27 are 2, 3, 3_
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it doesn't matter which products we choose as the interim factors, we should always reach the same outcome:
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