1 files changed, 77 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/src/Finding_Prime_Factors.adoc b/src/Finding_Prime_Factors.adoc
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ba164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/Finding_Prime_Factors.adoc
@@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
+Finding Prime Factors
+=====================
+:author: Aaron Ball
+:email: nullspoon@iohq.net
+
+
+== {doctitle}
+
+I have been working in my spare time on the https://projecteueler.net[Euler
+project] problems. Now, for most languages, these problems aren't too big of a
+deal, because most modern languages do much of the work for you (at least on
+the early problems).  I'm working on learning c++ though, and it doesn't do a
+lot of the work for you, which is great in my opnion. One thing it's really
+helping me with is number theory (or whatever it would actually be called). I
+never went to school for computer science, so I lack much of the math that many
+developers have. That said, nealry every problem that Euler has, is a really
+great test, not only of programming ability, but of number knowledge.
+
+My most recent problem I've been working on is refactoring my code to solve
+https://projecteuler.net/problem=3[problem 3]. Now, this problem isn't that
+difficult. Where the difficulty lies is in the calculation speed. My original
+program solved this one in about ten minutes I think (again, if you're sporting
+something like ruby, php, perl, etc, you have probably solved this faster
+because they built good calculation methods into the language). In going bad to
+refactor though, I've been focusing more on wasy to more efficiently calculate
+these things via brute force (I'm sure there's an equation for this out there,
+but I'm using a for loop). Here is the list of things that I found to speed up
+the calculation process.
+
+
+[[calculating-factors]]
+== Calculating Factors
+
+A factor is a number that an original number is divisible by (eg: the factors
+of 10 are 1, 2, 5, and 10).
+
+
+[[dont-go-above-half]]
+=== Don't go above half
+
+When you are finding factors, you are not finding them one at a time.  Each
+time you find a factor, you find its counterpart. For example, the factors of
+20 are 1, 2, 4, 5 , 10, 20. When you are looping through starting at 1 and you
+find that the number 20 is divisible by 2, you also know that its counterpart
+is 10 (20/2). When you find the next factor, 4, you have also found the factor
+5 (20/4 = 5), and so on. This means that your calculation time should be cut in
+half becuase you only have to calculate up to half of the original number (20
+in our example).  One more example to help visualize this, a table. Everyone
+loves tables!
+
+Factors of 20
+
+[cols=",",options="header",]
+|===================
+|Factor |Counterpart
+|1      |20
+|2      |10
+|4      |5
+|5      |4
+|10     |2
+|20     |1
+|===================
+
+See the overlap at 4 and 5?
+
+
+[[only-calculate-evens-or-odds]]
+==== Only Calculate Evens or Odds
+
+
+[[calculating-primes]]
+=== Calculating Primes
+
+Category:Drafts
+
+
+// vim: set syntax=asciidoc: