Math Tutor Explains: What are the Factors of 3?

As your math tutor, I’m here to guide you through the different types of factors of 3. So, what are the factors of 3?

• Factors of 3: 1, 3

• Sum of Factors of 3: 4

• Negative Factors of 3: -1, -3

• Prime Factors of 3: 1, 3

• Prime Factorization of 3: 3

There are two ways to find the factors of 3: using factor pairs and using prime factorization.

Factor pairs of 3 are any two numbers that, when multiplied together, equal 3. The question I would ask as a math tutor to guide you is: “what two numbers multiplied together equal 3?” Every factor can be paired with another factor and multiplying the two will result in 3.

In this case, we can see that 3 is a prime number. By definition, a prime number is a number that doesn’t have any other factors other than itself and 1.

So, 3 only has one factor pair:

(1, 3)

If you also consider negative factors, there is also a second factor pair:

(-1, -3)

Prime factorization is when you break down the factors of 3 to just the prime factors and expressing 3 as a product of those prime factors. Let’s go through the process and simplify it like a math tutor would!

In this case, because 3 is a prime number, we can simply state the primary factorization as 3.

For most numbers, we would take the smallest prime factor that is larger than 1 to start to break down the focus number. In this case, the smallest prime factor larger than 1 is 3.

3 ÷ 3 = 1

If we divide 3 by 3, we simply get 1, which can’t be broken down any further.

So, the prime factorization of 3 is just 3.

Practice your factoring skills by exploring how to factor other numbers, like the ones below:

Factors of 40 - The factors of 40 are 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 20, 40

Factors of 30 - The factors of 30 are 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 15, 30

Factors of 1 - The factors of 1 are 1

Factors of 31 - The factors of 31 are 1, 31