Prime factorization
Revision as of 12:33, 21 June 2006 by IntrepidMath (talk | contribs)
By the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic, every positive integer has a unique prime factorization. What is a prime factorization? It is a representation of a number in terms of powers of primes It is of the form , where n is any natural number, the
are prime numbers, and the
are their integral exponents.
Prime factorizations are important in many ways, for instance, to simplify fractions.