Does anyone know what factors of a number mean? Like for an a example: “ list all the factors of 54 in ascending order”.

Factors only apply to whole numbers. Often positive numbers, but we can factor negative values as well.

Factors are whole numbers that multiply to something else.

For example, 54 has factors 3 and 18 because 3*18 = 54. The number 54 also has factors of 2 and 27 because 2*27 = 54

The full list can be written like this:

To keep the list fairly short, I'll just consider the positive factors. We could consider something like (-2)*(-27) = 54 if you wanted, but again we'll restrict to just the positives.

From here, we can see that the following unique factors are present

1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 18, 27, 54

Those are all of the positive factors of 54 in ascending (aka increasing) order.