This week in math we learned about factoring by taking a common factor.
The greatest common factor of two or more monomials is the product of all their common prime factors. For example, the GCF of 5x and 10x² is 5x.
To factor the GCF out of a polynomial, we do the following:
- Find the GCF of all the terms in the polynomial.
- Express each term as a product of the GCF and another factor.
- Use the distributive property to factor out of GCF.
Let’s factor the GCF out of 2x²+6x.
