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There are many types of problems in life that require dividing one number by another. But
sometimes, we dont actually need to do the divisionwe just need to know if its even
possible to do the division in the first place. In these situations, you can save yourself time
and trouble by learning a few quick and dirty tips. So today were kicking things off by
looking at how to quickly tell if a number is divisible by 2 or 3.
But first, were giving away $100 this month! Visit http://stitcher.com/math to
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Why does this work? Well, in this case the answer is pretty intuitive; but lets talk about it a
little to help prepare us to understand the divisibility tests for bigger integers that well soon
see. The important thing to notice is that when we divide an even number by 2, the
remainder is always 0; and when we divide an odd number by 2, the remainder is always 1.
If you think about this for a minute, youll see that we can use that information to conclude
that a number is only divisible by 2 if it is evensince it wont have a remainder.
For the math whizzes out there, youll notice that we could just as well have summed this all
up using the connection between modular arithmetic and remainders that we talked about
in the past few weeks to say that a number is only divisible by 2 if that number modulo 2 is
congruent to 0.
Try breaking apart some other numbers like this for yourself and youll see that they can all
be written as some number of 9s, plus some number of 99s, plus some number of 999s (for
larger numbers), and so on, plus some other stuff that will always be the digits of the
original number. Thats precisely where the quick and dirty tip comes from!
Practice Problems
Okay, thats all the time we have for today. But before we finish up, here are a few practice
problems to help you test your divisibility testing skills:
1.
2.
3.
You can find the answers at the very end of this article. After checking them, feel free to
leave a comment at the bottom of the page and let me know how you did.
Wrap Up
If you have questions about how to solve these practice problems or any other math
questions, please email them to me atmathdude@quickanddirtytips.com, send them via
Twitter, or become a fan of the Math Dude on Facebook and get help from me and the other
math fans there.
Until next time, this is Jason Marshall with The Math Dudes Quick and Dirty Tips to Make
Math Easier. Thanks for reading math fans!
2.
3.
Divisibility
Problem:
Method:
2.
If the number has only two factors, 1 and itself, then it is prime.
3.
The above procedure works very well for small numbers. However, it would be timeconsuming to find all factors of 621. Thus we need a better method for determining if a large
number is prime or composite. Every number has one and itself as a factor. Thus, if we could
find one factor of 621, other than 1 and itself, we could prove that 621 is composite. One way
to find factors of large numbers quickly is to use tests for divisibility.
Definition
Example
18 is divisible by 9 since 18 9 =
2 with a remainder of 0.
Since 18 is divisible by 9, 9 is a
factor of 18.
We can test for divisibility by 3 (see table above) to quickly find a factor of 621
other than 1 and itself. The sum of the digits of 621 is 6+2+1 = 9. This
divisibility test and the definitions above tell us that...
Since the factors of 621 include 1, 3 and 621, we have proven that 621 has more
Since 621 has more than 2 factors, we have proven that it is composite.
Let's look at some other tests for divisibility and examples of each.
Divisibility Tests
Example
A number is divisible by 6 if it is
divisible by 2 AND it is divisible by 3.
Let's look at some examples in which we test the divisibility of a single whole number.
Example 1:
Solution:
Example 2:
Solution:
Example 3:
Solution:
Example 4:
Solution:
3.
35,120 is divisible by 4 since 20 is divisible by 4.
35,120 is divisible by 5 since the last digit is 0.
35,120 is not divisible by 6 since it is not divisible by both 2 and 3.
35,120 is divisible by 8 since the last 3 digits are 120, and 120 is divisible by 8.
35,120 is not divisible by 9 since the sum of the digits is 11, and 11 is not divisible by
9.
35,120 is divisible by 10 since the last digit is 0.
Solution:
Example 6: Is the number 91 prime or composite? Use divisibility when possible to find
your answer.
91 is not divisible by 2 since the last digit is not 0, 2, 4, 6 or 8.
91 is not divisible by 3 since the sum of the digits (9+1=10) is not divisible by
3.
91 is not evenly divisible by 4 (remainder is 3).
91 is not divisible by 5 since the last digit is not 0 or 5.
91 is not divisible by 6 since it is not divisible by both 2 and 3.
91 divided by 7 is 13.
Solution:
Summary: Divisibility tests can be used to find factors of large whole numbers quickly,
and thus determine if they are prime or composite. When working with large
whole numbers, tests for divisibility are more efficient than the traditional
factoring method.