Final answer:
To find the pth element in the list of a number's factors sorted in ascending order, first determine all factors, sort them, and then locate the pth element in the list. If no such element exists, return 0.
Step-by-step explanation:
To determine the factors of a number, you need to find all the whole numbers that divide evenly into that number. For example, let's find the factors of 12. The factors of 12 are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12 because these numbers can divide 12 with no remainder. Once you have the list of factors, sort it in ascending order. If you are asked to return the pth element of this sorted list and that element is not present because p exceeds the number of factors, then the answer should be 0. Let us assume p=3, in the list of factors of 12 in ascending order, the third element is 3, so that is our answer. However, if p was 8, our answer would be 0, since there aren't eight factors of 12.