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Week 06 Recursion

The document discusses recursion and provides examples of recursive algorithms and problems including triangular numbers, factorials, binary search, Towers of Hanoi, and mergesort. It explains the characteristics of recursion and compares recursive to iterative implementations in terms of efficiency.

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binvaongbavai
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23 views

Week 06 Recursion

The document discusses recursion and provides examples of recursive algorithms and problems including triangular numbers, factorials, binary search, Towers of Hanoi, and mergesort. It explains the characteristics of recursion and compares recursive to iterative implementations in terms of efficiency.

Uploaded by

binvaongbavai
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 32

1

RECURSION
Truong Thi Ngoc Phuong
Contents
2

 Introduction
 Triangular Numbers
 Factorials
 A Recursive Binary Search
 The Towers of Hanoi
 Mergesort
3 Introduction
4 Triangular Numbers: Examples
5 Finding nth Term using a Loop
6
Finding nth Term using Recursion
7

 Value of the nth term is the SUM of:


 The first column (row): n
 The SUM of the rest columns (rows)
Recursive method
8
Recursive method
9

 Now, it is complete with


stopping condition

 See triangle.java program


Recursion Characteristics
10

 It calls itself
 When it calls itself, it does so to solve a smaller
problem
 There is some version of the problem that is simple
enough that the routine can solve it, and return, without
calling itself
 Is recursion efficient?
 No
 Address of calling methods must be remembered (in stack)
 Intermediate arguments must also be stored
Factorials
11
Factorials
12
Loop
13 Binary Search: Recursion vs. Loop
Recursion
14 Binary Search: Recursion vs. Loop
Divide-and-conquer
15

 Divide problems into two smaller problems


 Solve each one separately (divide again)
 Usually have 2 recursive calls in main method: one for
each half
 Can be non-recursive
 Examples
 The Towers of Hanoi
 MergeSort
Towers of Hanoi
See Towers Workshop Applet
16

 An ancient puzzle consisting of a number of disks


placed on three columns (A, B, C)
 Objectives
 Transfer all disks from column A to column C
 Rules
 Only one disk can be moved at a time
 No disk can be placed on a disk that is smaller than
itself
Algorithm
17

 Move first n-1 subtree from S to I


 Move the largest disk from S to D
 Move the subtree from I to D
18 Algorithm
19 Implementation
20 Merge Sort
Merge Sort
21

 Simple Sorting Algorithms: O(N2)


 Bubble Sort, Selection Sort, Insertion Sort
 Using Sorted Linked List
 MergeSort: O(NlogN)
 Approach to MergeSort
 Merging Two Sorted Arrays
 Sorting by Merging
 Demo via Workshop Applet
 Efficiency of MergeSort
Merging two sorted arrays
22

 Given two sorted arrays (A, B)


 Creating sorted array C containing all elements of
A, B
Merge Sort
23

 Devide an array in halves


 Sort each half
 Using recursion
 Divide half into quarters
 Sort each of the quarters
 Merge them to make a sorted
half
 Call merge() to merge two
halves into a single sorted
array
24 Implementation
25 Implementation
26 Implementation
27 Example
Efficiency of Merge
Sort: O(NlogN)
28

Number of Copies

Copied to Workspace
Copied back to
original array

NEX
T
29 Eliminate recursion
Recursion: inefficient
30

 Some algorithms are naturally in recursive form


(merge sort, Hanoi Tower, etc)
 But recursion is not efficient
 try to transform to non-recursive approach
Recursion & stack
31

 Recursion is usually implemented by stacks


Simulating a recursive method
32

 Read more on p.294

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