In this first week we learned a few new lessons, but with these lessons the one that I think would be the most important is finding the prime factors of a number (as you need it to find the LCM (lowest common multiple) and the GCF (greatest common factor)). To find the prime numbers of a specific number you can use two different methods, the division table or the tree diagram. Every composite number can be expressed as a product of prime factors, for example 12 has these prime numbers 2,3 (a prime number is a whole number with only two factors 1, and itself). To find the prime factors I normally make a factor tree so I’m going to show you how to narrow down numbers to get to the prime factors. First you break it down into two using two whole numbers that multiply together to produce that number then you break down those new branches, and so on and so on.

The first step in solving this 3 operation equation is to multiply (1/2 x 3/6) which produces 3/12, so the new equation as shown on the next like is 1/2 + 3/12 – 2/6 in order to do our last two operations (addition and subtraction) we need to have the same denominators with all the fractions so we will 12 since 2 and 6 both can fit into 12. 1/2 * 6 and 3/6 * 2 we will get 6/12 + 3/12 – 4/12= we will simply just do addition and subtraction from left to right which will give us 5/12