For factoring, I would definitely start by removing all the 2s. It's easy, it's always instantly obvious if you're done, and for any even number it'll make the number smaller effectively for free. After 2s are 5s for the same reason.
Yeah, that occurred to me after I did the divide by 3 example on an even number two. Steps -1 and 0 should always be "if it ends in 0, lop off the zero and add a 2 and 5 to the factorization" and "if it ends in 2, divide by 2 and add a 2 to the factorization."
I'm only liking this because of the cool "your brain on math" AI image.
For factoring, I would definitely start by removing all the 2s. It's easy, it's always instantly obvious if you're done, and for any even number it'll make the number smaller effectively for free. After 2s are 5s for the same reason.
Yeah, that occurred to me after I did the divide by 3 example on an even number two. Steps -1 and 0 should always be "if it ends in 0, lop off the zero and add a 2 and 5 to the factorization" and "if it ends in 2, divide by 2 and add a 2 to the factorization."