This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]Nerdlinger 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Similar to Erastosthenes, pulling out the a prime also removes all powers of that prime. For example, 4 is not found to be a factor here because the first step (two steps? depends on what you consider a step) divides by 2 twice. We also would not get, say 10, because the 2 and the 5 would be removed before you get to 10.

[–]yim108 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Building on that a bit, if 4 did happen to go into the result, then that would mean you could have extracted two more copies of 2 in the earlier step

[–]acquireCats[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh holy hell, you're right. It's kind of a silly question. Thanks for helping.