Two problems with this question:mariah wrote:How many positive factors does N have?
1). N^2 has four positive factors.
2). 2N has three positive factors.
First, it doesn't say that N is an integer, which must be true for this question to make any sense.
Second, statement (2) is impossible: there are no numbers with three positive factors.
Primes have 2 factors: 1 and the prime
All other numbers greater than 1 have at least 4 factors.
Now, there are lots of numbers with 3 distinct positive factors, but we're not told that the factors are distinct.
What's the source?













