Prime numbers are important to the subject of math. They are natural numbers that are greater than 1. The reason they are prime is that they cannot come from multiplying two smaller numbers. Prime numbers can also be characterized as numbers that have no factors.
An example is with the fraction 3/5. Both three and five are prime numbers. If a student is asked to reduce this fraction to simpler terms, they would be unable to, because they can not be reduced more, which is why they are prime. Other prime numbers include two, seven, thirteen, nineteen, ninety-seven, and twenty-one.
Prime numbers are numbers that are evenly divisible by one and itself. These numbers are important in math because this means that these numbers have no other factors. When a student is reducing fractions to simpler terms, then prime numbers in this fraction would mean this fraction is in its simplest term. It can’t be reduced any further. The other numbers that are not prime numbers are called composite numbers. This means that they have at least one set of numbers that can be multiplied together to make this number.
Some composite numbers have many factors or numbers that can be multiplied together to get this number. Examples of prime numbers include two, three, five, seven, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one and thirteen.