Factors of 4

Introduction

It is family game night! You break out the latest board game for your family of 4. Everyone looks at each other. Should you play individually or in teams? If you play board games with your family or friends, this is something that happens often.

Sometimes, it can be more fun to play in teams, but there are times when you want to be competitive and play individually.

To figure out how many different ways you can play the game, you will need to find the factors of 4. Then you can see if all of them will work.

Using Rules to Find Factors

First, let’s find out the rules to finding factors. Like most concepts in math, there are rules or steps. Factoring is the same way. Let’s use the example above to find the factors of 4 using the rules below.

For 4, there are three factors: (1, 2, 4). Now, let’s look back at our situation with our family playing the game. Using the factors, we could have the following combinations to play:

Your family could divide into 2 teams of 2 or play individually which is shown as 4 teams of 1 player each. Obviously, you would not play with 1 big team. That would not make sense. So, even though 1 is a factor of 4, it may not apply to this situation.

In other situations, it might be a choice to consider, but this game would not be fun to play if everyone was on the same team.

Factors of 4 are 1, 2, and 4

Challenging Questions

Now, that you have learned the factors of 4, let’s see if you can work these word problems. Just like the problem above with the family’s gameboard situation, see if you can explain.