Where does factor collide?

A number or expression that divides another exactly, leaving no remainder, so that the larger quantity can be written as a product of its factors. In the integers, 3 and 4 are factors of 12 because 12 equals 3 times 4, and factorization breaks a number into such divisors, uniquely into primes, as set out in Hardy and Wright's An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers. The referent is a relationship between numbers or polynomials, and the unit is a divisor, an object in a ring. Nothing here is estimated or inferred: a factor is proved to divide, not read off data, which sets this meaning apart from every other on this page.[1]

Unit

A divisor in a ring of numbers or polynomials

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Proved by division, not measured; a factor either divides exactly or it does not

A latent variable inferred from the pattern of correlations among observed measures, posited to explain why those measures move together. When several mental tests correlate, Spearman in his 1904 paper "General Intelligence," Objectively Determined and Measured proposed a single common factor, g, underlying them, and factor analysis was built to recover such factors from a correlation matrix. Thurstone later argued for several factors rather than one, in his Multiple-Factor Analysis. The referent is an unobserved dimension, the unit is a latent score, and it is estimated from data, never divided into anything, which distinguishes it sharply from the mathematical divisor that shares the word.[2][3]

Unit

A latent dimension underlying observed scores

Recovery means

The point of factor analysis: recovering latent factors from the correlations among measures

Measured by

Estimated from correlations among observed measures by factor analysis

An input used in production, one of the broad classes of resources, land, labour, and capital, that combine to make goods and services. In classical and neoclassical economics a factor of production is something a firm hires or buys and pays a return on, rent to land, wages to labour, interest to capital, as Marshall set out in his Principles of Economics. The referent is a productive resource, and the unit is a quantity of input priced in a factor market. It is neither a divisor nor an inferred dimension; it is a physical or financial input a firm combines with others, which separates it from the other meanings.[4]

Unit

A quantity of a productive input

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Counted or valued as input quantities and factor prices in a market