Tag Archives: factoring by grouping

Factoring Polynomials

Finding the Greatest Common Factor (GCF)

Finding the greatest common factor simply involves finding the largest number or term which will fit evenly into each number or term in a list. The way I like to go about this is by breaking each number or term into its smallest parts. Break each number down until you are multiplying together only prime numbers. All the numbers that they have in common should then be multiplied back up to create the GCF.

This is what it would look like in a list of numbers:

And this is what it would look like in a list of terms:

Continue reading