Question 108826
how you can tell if a problem when you first look at it,doesn't have a greater common factor.For example my teacher had this one:
21x-7
You have to see that 21 is the product of 3 and 7
You have to see that you have two terms: 21x and -7
Then you might see that "7" is a factor common to both terms
So, you "factor out" the 7 by dividing each term by 7 to get:
7(3x-1)
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x^9y^6 - x^7y^5 + x^4y^4 + x^3y^3
Checking the four terms you have to see there is a common
factor of x^3 in each term and a common factor of y^3 in
each term.
Divide each terms by x^3y^3 to get:
x^3y^3 (x^6x^3 -x^4y^3 +xy + 1)
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Hope that helps.
Cheers,
Stan H.