Last week I attended a family reunion. My uncle Bob showed me a very clever way that helps him remember the number of children that my dad and each of his siblings had.

In case you are wondering, I was one of Leonard’s fifteen kids: He and his first wife had 4 children. They divorced. He met my mom who already had a child of her own. They married and had 6 children. She died. Then after he married my step-mother who already had two grown children, they had two more.

• 536 is a composite number.
• Prime factorization: 536 = 2 x 2 x 2 x 67, which can be written 536 = (2^3) x 67
• The exponents in the prime factorization are 3 and 1. Adding one to each and multiplying we get (3 + 1)(1 + 1) = 4 x 2 = 8. Therefore 536 has exactly 8 factors.
• Factors of 536: 1, 2, 4, 8, 67, 134, 268, 536
• Factor pairs: 536 = 1 x 536, 2 x 268, 4 x 134, or 8 x 67
• Taking the factor pair with the largest square number factor, we get √536 = (√4)(√134) = 2√134 ≈ 23.15167