This week in math I learned when simplifying radicals, you must always have at least one of the simplified factors be a perfect root of whatever the index is. If you attempt to factor a number that has no perfect roots as factors, then you’ll be doing nothing helpful for yourself.

For example, if you are factoring the square root of 27, you will be able to do so as it has a factor of 9, which can be reduced to 3, allowing the radical to be simplified.