Factors of a term
We saw above that the expression
Consists of two terms
The term
We say that 4, x and x are the factors of the term
The term

We can represent the terms and factors of the terms of an expression conveniently and elegantly by a tree diagram. The tree for the expression
Note: In the tree diagram, we have used dotted lines for factors and continuous lines for terms. This is to avoid mixing them.
Let us draw a tree diagram for the expression 5xy + 10.
The factors are such that they cannot be further factorised. Thus we do not write 5xy as 5 × xy, because xy can be further factorised.
Similarly, if