Colin Penk

The new method that I found is called the ladder method (example below).  What you do is you write down the numbers and find a common factor between the two numbers to divide by and you divide until you no longer have a common factor.  If you then want to find the GCF, you simply multiply the numbers on the left, which were the factors you divided by to begin with.  If you want to find the LCM, you multiply the numbers on the left and at the bottom, as shown in the example below.

I prefer the prime factorization method we learned in class because it is easier and less time consuming for me.