A number $a$ is called a **divisor** or a **factor** of a number $b$ if $b$ is divisible by $a$, which means that there exists some integer $k$ such that $b = ka$. Conventionally, $1$ and $n$ are considered divisors of $n$. A number $n > 1$ is **prime** if its only divisors are $1$ and $n$. Numbers greater than \(1\) that are not prime are **composite**.
Every number has a unique **prime factorization**: a way of decomposing it into a product of primes, as follows:
\[ n = {p_1}^{a_1} {p_2}^{a_2} \cdots {p_k}^{a_k} \]
where the $p_i$ are distinct primes and the $a_i$ are positive integers.
Now, we will discuss how to find the prime factorization of an integer.
(pseudocode)
This algorithm runs in $O(\sqrt{n})$ time, because the for loop checks divisibility for at most $\sqrt{n}$ values. Even though there is a while loop inside the for loop, dividing $n$ by $i$ quickly reduces the value of $n$, which means that the outer for loop runs less iterations, which actually speeds up the code.
Let's look at an example of how this algorithm works, for $n = 252$.
(table)
At this point, the for loop terminates, because $i$ is already 3 which is greater than $\lfloor \sqrt{7} \rfloor$. In the last step, we add $7$ to the list of factors $v$, because it otherwise won't be added, for a final prime factorization of $\{2, 2, 3, 3, 7\}$.
## GCD & LCM
The **greatest common divisor (GCD)** of two integers $a$ and $b$ is the largest integer that is a factor of both $a$ and $b$. In order to find the GCD of two numbers, we use the Euclidean Algorithm, which is as follows:
In **modular arithmetic**, instead of working with integers themselves, we work with their remainders when divided by $m$. We call this taking modulo $m$. For example, if we take $m = 23$, then instead of working with $x = 247$, we use $x \bmod 23 = 17$. Usually, $m$ will be a large prime, given in the problem; the two most common values are $10^9 + 7$, and $998\,244\,353$. Modular arithmetic is used to avoid dealing with numbers that overflow built-in data types, because we can take remainders, according to the following formulas: