Question

Three students need to produce a prime factorization of 48. Donna states that the first factors in the tree should be 6 and 8. Larry states that the first factors in the tree should be 4 and 12. Trish states that the initial factors of 48 do not affect the prime factorization. Explain why Trish is correct.

Answer 1

Trish is correct because whatever number starts the tree equals 48 anyway. The numbers that matters is if you follow through when factoring out the whole tree of 48.