1Cademy - Factor of a Number

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Divisible by a Number

Definition

Factor of a Number

In the mathematical expression $a \cdot b$ , both $a$ and $b$ are called factors. If $a \cdot b = m$ and both $a$ and $b$ are integers, then $a$ and $b$ are factors of $m$ . For instance, because $8 \cdot 9 = 72$ , both $8$ and $9$ are factors of $72$ . A single number can have many factor pairs: $72$ can also be written as $1 \cdot 72$ , $2 \cdot 36$ , $3 \cdot 24$ , $4 \cdot 18$ , or $6 \cdot 12$ . This gives the complete list of factors of $72$ as $1$ , $2$ , $3$ , $4$ , $6$ , $8$ , $9$ , $12$ , $18$ , $24$ , $36$ , and $72$ . Saying that $a$ is a factor of $m$ is another way of stating that $m$ is divisible by $a$ , or that $m$ is a multiple of $a$ .