How do you find the greatest common factor of 36, 12?

1 Answer
Nov 5, 2016

The long way would be to factorize both numbers into primes.

Explanation:

#36=2xx2xx3xx3#
#12=2xx2xx3#
Primes they both have in common:
#2xx2xx3=12#

But you could also have seen that:
#36=3xx12#
#12=1xx12#

The long method always works, but seeing may allow you a sortcut.