A question that stumped me was on the practice test on page 55, clearly, I did not know how to use prime factorization let alone try to do it on a test. The question stated: The sum of all prime factors of 160 797, I didn’t even know how to find the GCF in the first place. Then I looked back on my workbook to really understand what a prime number was as well as a GCF, completing examples in the process. Afterwards, one obstacle remained which was to use prime factorization, to overcome this I was deep in thought on how to use a factor table. Then I realized, I can use a factor tree instead. After a tedious process I found the solution to the problem, with the answer being 73.

There weren’t necessairly any a-ha moments this week besides figuring out how to use prime factorization to my full advantage as well as figuring out the difference between the GCF and the LCM. Which was that the GCF represented the number that could factor into all products such as 8, 16 and 20 (4), whereas the LCM represents the lowest product number you can find between quotients (ex. 5 and 7 have an LCM of 35).

A question that stumped me this week was on the assignment of radicals (1.5), question #13 on page 38. Here the question asked me to find the fifth root of -7/8 and add it to the fourth root of 7/8 with a coefficient of 2. While the answer in the Math 10 workbook stated that it was 0.96 (rounding it to nearest hundrenth), I did not understand as to how to arrive at that answer. The confusing part of it all really was that it was dealing with fractions and roots and I was incapable of solving it, despite asking for help from my friend – I really did not understand how to solve it so I left it behind, promising to come back to it.

This week I was really unsure about how to convert mixed radicals into whole and reversing the process back, that is until a friend at lunch helped describe the steps to take in order to do them. He explained to me how to go upon doing it, in which we tried with a series of different questions; the results were, to say the least, successful.