What are factors in an expression?

Answer 1

Factors aremultiplicativeterms (i.e., they multiply into all the terms). The easiest way to see this is by example.

Example 1:

a(b+cd)
a is a factor and (b+cd) is a factor

Example 2:
x2 - 9 = (x-3)(x+3)
(x-3) is a factor and (x+3) is a factor

Hopefully you are beginning to notice you can always wrap parenthesis around a factor without altering the order of operations.

Example 3:
2a(b)(9n-x)+8

This is a trick one, but you can factor out a 2:

2a(b)(9n-x)+8 = (1)(2)a(b)(9n-x)+(4)(2) = (2)(ab(9n-x)+4)

The factors are: 2 and (ab(9n-x)+4)

Example 4:

If that +8 wasn't on example 3, what would the factors be?

2a(b)(9n-x)

They would be:

2, a, b, and (9n-x)