Objectives 

• Greatest Common Factor

• Special Factoring Techniques

• Factoring by Grouping

Examples

• Example 1

• Example 2

• Example 3

• Example 4

A typical factoring problem involves an expression in which different variable terms are being added and/or subtracted.

The goal of factoring is to identify the common components, called "factors," in each term.

We then extract (i.e. "un-multiply") the common factors so that the orignial variable expression can be written as a product (a multiplication of the factors).

For example,

and

We can also factor more complicated expressions by using special techniques, presented in this lesson.

Some of these techniques can be expressed as a general formula.  However,  rather than trying to memorize the formulas,you should study and practice lots of specific examples.

Note: Don't be discouraged if you can't always recognize at first glance the best factoring approach to use. One of your goals in this section is to learn how to bounce back from a false start.