Question

What does factorise an equation mean?

Answer 1

Factorising is the reverse process of expanding brackets. A factorised answer will always contain a set of brackets. To factorise an expression fully, take out the highest common factor (HCF) of all the terms.

Answer 2

Factorising is the reverse of expanding brackets, so it is, for example, putting 2x² + x - 3 into the form (2x + 3)(x - 1).

This is an important way of solving quadratic equations.

The first step of factorising an expression is to 'take out' any common factors which the terms have. So if you were asked to factorise x² + x, since x goes into both terms, you would write x(x + 1) .