How to Find HCF by Division Method of Two Numbers?

There are many ways to determine the highest common factor of the given numbers. For every method, the answer to the HCF of the numbers would always be the same. There are three methods to find the HCF of two numbers: HCF by listing factors method and HCF by division method.HCF by prime factorization, in this article, how to find the highest common factor (HCF)

HCF by division method

The HCF of two numbers can be found using the division method. Let us understand this using the following steps and the example given below.

Step:1 In this way, we divide the greatest number by the smaller number and check the remainder.

Step:2 then, we make the remainder of the previous step the new divisor; and the divisor of the previous step becomes the new dividend. After this, we perform the long division again. 

Step:3 We continue the long division process till we get the remainder as 0. It should be noted that the last divisor will be the highest common factor HCF of those two numbers.

For example: calculate the HCF of 24 and 64 using the division method.

Solution: Let us calculate the HCF of the given numbers using the following steps

Step 1: Among the two given numbers, 64 is the greater number, and 24 is the smaller number.

Step2: We divide 64 by 24 and check the remainder. Here, the remainder is 16. Make the remainder 16 as the new divisor and the previous divisor 24 as the new dividend and perform the long division again.

Step3: We will continue this process till we get the remainder as 0. Here, the last divisor is 8 which is the HCF of 24 and 64.

HCF of Multiple Number

The method to calculate the HCF of multiple numbers is the same when we use ‘the prime factorization method’ ‘listing factors method’ .and ‘the prime factorization method’. However, while using the division method, there is a slight change in the case of multiple numbers. Let us learn how to calculate the HCF of three numbers using the division method.