With the help of an example, briefly explain the constant factor in time complexity.

In time complexity analysis, the constant factor is a multiplicative coefficient in a term that does not depend on the input size n. Big-O notation ignores constant factors because, as n becomes very large, they do not change the growth rate (order) of the algorithm - only the relative rate at which the running time grows with n matters. Example: An algorithm that performs $5n$ operations and another that performs $3n$ operations for an input of size n are both $O(n)$ - the constants 5 and 3 (the constant factors) are dropped, since both algorithms still grow linearly with n.