What is the greatest common factor of 250?

Answer 1

There cannot be a greatest common factor (GCF) of just one number. To be common there need to be at least two numbers. If you find all the factors of two or more numbers, and you find some factors are the same ("common"), then the largest of those common factors is the Greatest Common Factor.

Answer 2

GCF stands for Greatest Common Factor. The word 'common' is used when we compare two or more elements to see similarities or when something is equally shared by two or more things.

Let us consider an example:

What is common between a lion and a tiger?

1 - Both are wild animals

2 - Both are mammals

3 - Both are flesh eating animals

But we can't ask for similarities for a lion to itself.

So, we need at least two things to compare. We can't compare an element to itself to find similarities.

Similarly it is not possible to find GCF for one number only.

The term GCF is not defined for only one number.