Beginning Algebra

Cultures from all over the world have devel-oped number systems and ways to record patterns in their natural surroundings. The Mayans in Central America had one of the most sophisticated number systems in the world inthe twelfth century

A

.

D

.The Chinese numbering and record-ing system dates from around 1200

B

.

C

.

E

.The oldest evi-dence of numerical record is in Africa, where a bone notched in numerical patterns and dating from about 35,000

B

.

C

.

E

.was found in the Lebembo Mountains near modern-daySwaziland in southern Africa.The roots of algebra developed among the Babylonians4000 years ago in an area now part of the country of Iraq.The Babylonians developed ways to record useful numericalrelationships so that they were easy to remember, easy torecord, and helpful in solving problems. Archeologists havefound many tables, such as one giving successive powers of a given number, 9

2

, 9

3

, 9

4

, . . . , 9

n

. The tables include in-structions for solving problems in engineering, economics,city planning, and agriculture. The writing is on clay tablets.Some of the formulas developed by the Babylonians are stillin use today.You are about to embark on an exciting and useful endeavor: learning to usealgebra to help you solve problems. It will take some time and effort, but do not bediscouraged. Everyone can master this topic—people just like you have used it for many centuries! Today algebra is even more useful than in the past because it is used in nearly every ﬁeld of human endeavor.

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RITHMETIC

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0

1

3

Prime Factorization

0.1

OBJECTIVES

1.

Find the factors of a natural number

2.

Determine whether a number is prime, composite,or neither

3.

Find the prime factorization for a number

4.

Find the GCF for two or more numbers

Overcoming Math Anxiety

Throughout this text, we will present you with a series of class-testedtechniques that are designed to improve your performance in this math class.Hint #1Become familiar with your text book.Perform each of the following tasks.

1.

Use the Table of Contents to ﬁnd the title of Section 5.1.

2.

Use the index to ﬁnd the earliest reference to the term

mean.

(By the way,this term has nothing to do with the personality of either your instructor orthe text book author!)

3.

Find the answer to the ﬁrst Check Yourself exercise in Section 0.1.

4.

Find the answers to the Self-Test for Chapter 1.

5.

Find the answers to the odd-numbered exercises in Section 0.1.

6.

In the margin notes for Section 0.1, ﬁnd the deﬁnition for the term

relatively prime.

Now you know where some of the most important features of the text are.When you have a moment of confusion, think about using one of thesefeatures to help you clear up that confusion.A

set

is a collection of objects.

Deﬁnitions:

Set

We generally use braces to enclose the elements of a set.{cow, dog, fox, cat}or{daisy, lily, sun

ﬂ

ower, tulip}Of course, in mathematics many (but not all) of the sets we are interested in are sets of numbers.The numbers used to count things

—

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on

—

are called the

natural

(or

counting

)

numbers.

The

whole numbers

consist of the natural numbers and How would you arrange the following list of objects: cow, dog, daisy, fox, lily, sun

ﬂ

ower,cat, tulip?Although there are many ways to arrange the objects, most people would break theminto two groups, the animals and the

ﬂ

owers. In mathematics, we call a group of things thathave something in common a

set.

4

C

HAPTER

0

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RITHMETIC

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zero

—

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on. They can be represented on a number line like the oneshown. Zero (0) is considered the origin.

Listing factors leads us to an important classi

ﬁ

cation of whole numbers. Any wholenumber larger than 1 is either a

prime

or a

composite

number. Let

’

s look at the followingde

ﬁ

nitions.

A

factor

of a whole number is another whole number that will

divide exactly

into that number. This means that the division will have a remainder of 0.

Deﬁnitions:

Factor

A

prime number

is any whole number greater than 1 that has only 1 and itselfas factors.

Deﬁnitions:

Prime Number

Finding Factors

List all factors of 18.3



6



182



9



18

2 and 9 are also factors of 18.

1



18



18

1 and 18 are factors of 18.

1, 2, 3, 6, 9, and 18 are all the factors of 18.

Because 3



6



18, 3 and 6 are factors(or divisors) of 18.

Example 1

List all the factors of

24.

CHECK YOURSELF 1*

NOTE

The centered dotrepresents multiplication.

NOTE

2 and 5 can also becalled

divisors

of 10. Theydivide 10 exactly.

NOTE

A whole number greaterthan 1 will always have itselfand 1 as factors. Sometimesthese will be the

only

factors.For instance, 1 and 3 are theonly factors of 3.

*Check Yourself answers appear at the end of each section throughout the book.

Any whole number can be written as a product of two whole numbers. For example, we saythat 3



4



12. We call 3 and 4

factors

of 12.As examples, 2, 3, 5, and 7 are prime numbers. Their only factors are 1 and themselves.To check whether a number is prime, one approach is simply to divide the smaller primes, 2, 3, 5, 7, and so on, into the given number. If no factors other than 1 and the givennumber are found, the number is prime.

NOTE

This is a complete list ofthe factors. There are no otherwhole numbers that divide 18exactly. Note that the factors of18, except for 18 itself, are

smaller

than 18.

NOTE

How large can a primenumber be? There is no largestprime number. To date, thelargest

known

prime is2

6972593



1. This is a numberwith 2,098,960 digits, if you arecurious. Of course, a computerhad to be used to verify that anumber of this size is prime. Bythe time you read this,someone may very well havefound an even larger primenumber.

1 42 3The origin650

The number line continuesforever in both directions.

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