Monday, January 26, 2009

PREP FOR GMAT: PRIME AND COMPOSITE NUMBERS

A prime number has exactly 2 factors, the number itself and 1.
In other words, the prime number can be divided only by 1 and by itself.

Example: 5 is a prime number, because the only factors it has are 1 and 5.



A composite number has at least one more factor that the number itself or 1.
In fact, all whole numbers that are not prime are composite except for 1 and 0, which are not prime and not composite.

The composite numbers less than 20 are 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18