Skip to main content

Learn with Mentor · 7 min

Prime or Composite

Decide whether a number is prime, composite, or neither by checking its positive factors and using divisibility tests to find extra factors.

Let's start

Count the factors

Prime and composite describe how many positive factors a whole number has. The goal is not to divide by every possible number forever; it is to decide whether there is an extra factor besides 1 and the number itself.