SOLUTION: Find the greatest common factor for each of the following sets of terms. 12a^3b^2, 18a^2b^3, 6a^4b^4

Question 77423: Find the greatest common factor for each of the following sets of terms.
12a^3b^2, 18a^2b^3, 6a^4b^4

Answer by jim_thompson5910(35256) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
We can see the GCF among the numbers is the greatest number that can go into 12,18,and 6. This number is 6 since it can go into all 3 of these numbers. Now we need to look at the variables. We see that they all have a and b in their terms, so our GCF will have at least one of each. Since the lowest exponent for a is 2, our GCF for a is . Since the lowest exponent for b is 2, the GCF for b is . Combining all of this info, we get:
GCF:

Notice how we can factor out the GCF out of all of these evenly. For instance, say we have

We can factor the GCF out of the expression to get

When we distribute to the terms in the parenthesis we get
again

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