Exploring new mathematical models often involves difficulties in perceiving information and an inner desire to find more straightforward explanations. If geometrical patterns are understandable due to their visual representation, it seems more challenging to work with abstract numbers. It is necessary to be completely honest to say that I have tried several times to master the theory of the greatest common factor, and each time I failed. Indeed, I understood the definition of this model and what it is used for, but as soon as I had to solve the practice, I always made arithmetical or logical mistakes.
The material I studied seemed to be an excellent alternative to the information I had read before. In this article, Khan Academy examined in detail the nature of the GCF and showed how the calculations are related to the decomposition of two members (“Greatest common factor of monomials,” 2018). Moreover, I found a very effective way to present the material when the author first talks about this model for integers and then moves on to single members. Developing the topic further, Khan Academy gives readers a hint and says that the variable part of the factor may include the smallest possible power. So, I think this is a good tip because, the following tasks, saved my time searching for the common power.
Thanks to this lesson, I can say with confidence that I have understood the concept of the greatest common factor and now know how to solve the relevant examples. As soon as I opened the link to the lesson for the first time, I wanted to practice my existing mathematical counting skills and tried to solve the tasks without reading them first. I must say, out of five activities, I was able to perform only two correctly, and these were the very first tasks. Then I realized that I definitely needed to understand this topic, and I read the whole article twice. After that, when I solved all the examples, I scored 5/5. Thus, I consider this to be tremendous progress in mastering this topic of mathematics, which was made possible by a good presentation of the material, clarity, and timely practice.
References
Greatest common factor of monomials. (2018). Khan Academy.