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CEN 235 2. Recursion

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27 views18 pages

CEN 235 2. Recursion

Uploaded by

Berdan Mengunogul
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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CEN 235 Data Structures

2. Recursion

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Volkan TUNALI


Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences
Department of Software Engineering
Outline

▪ Recursion
▪ Factorial
▪ Fibonacci Series
▪ Warning on Recursion
Recursion – Definition

▪ A recursive program is one that calls itself.


▪ An essential ingredient is a termination condition.
▪ Many interesting algorithms are quite simply expressed with
recursive programs.
Recursion – Concept

▪ A recursive function divides the problem into two conceptual


pieces:
▪ a piece that the function knows how to solve (base case),
▪ a piece that is very similar to, but a little simpler than the original problem,
hence still unknown how to solve by the function (call(s) of the function
to itself).

▪ Base case: the simplest version of the problem that is not further
reducible.
▪ The function actually knows how to solve this version of the problem.
Recursion – Concept Visualised
Factorial

Termination
▪ N! = N×(N-1)! for N≥1 with 0! = 1 Condition

▪ N! = N×(N-1)×(N-2)!
▪ N! = N×(N-1)×(N-2) … 0!
Factorial – C Code

▪ N! = N×(N-1)! for N≥1 with 0! = 1

int factorial(int N)
{
Termination
if (N==0) return 1; Condition
return N*factorial(N-1);
}

▪ Note: We don’t call this function with a negative N.


Factorial – Function Call Stack
Fibonacci Series

Termination
▪ FN = FN-1 + FN-2 for N≥2 with F0=F1=1 Condition

▪ This defines the sequence:


1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 …
F0 F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 …
Fibonacci Series – C Code

▪ FN = FN-1 + FN-2 for N≥2 with F0=F1=1

int fib(int N)
{
Termination
if (N<=1) return 1; Condition
return fib(N-1) + fib(N-2);
}
Fibonacci Series – Interesting Properties

▪ FN is the number of calls needed to compute FN, unless N=0 or


N=1.
▪ FN ≈ ΦN, where Φ=1.61803… so-called “Golden Ratio”
Fibonacci Series – Call Tree
Fibonacci Series – Number of Function Calls

Num of Func Calls Num of Func Calls


N FN
Including Calls to F0 and F1 Excluding Calls to F0 and F1
0 1
1 1
2 2
3 3
4 5
5 8
6 13
7 21
It turns out to be 2FN -1
Fibonacci Series – Number of Function Calls

Num of Func Calls Num of Func Calls


N FN
Including Calls to F0 and F1 Excluding Calls to F0 and F1
0 1 1 1
1 1 1 1
2 2 3 2
3 3 5 3
4 5 9 5
5 8 15 8
6 13 25 13
7 21 41 21
It turns out to be 2FN -1
Warning About Recursive Factorial and Fibonacci Series

▪ These two examples do not show the power of recursion.


▪ Why is that?
▪ Because these implementations are so inefficient to be useful.
▪ We have better iterative solutions, of course.
▪ However, we’ll see algorithms where recursion will demonstrate its
real power.
Summary

▪ A recursive program is one that calls itself.


▪ An essential ingredient is a termination condition.
▪ Many interesting algorithms are quite simply expressed with
recursive programs.
▪ Some problems are nice to define recursively but unwise to
implement recursively!
Coding Practice

1. fib(n) with recursion


2. fib(n) without recursion
1. without a lookup table
2. using a lookup table (Iterative and Recursive Versions)
1. There is a story (cos/sin)
3. fib(n) call count, visualization, and timing
Thank you for your attention!

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Volkan TUNALI


Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences
Department of Software Engineering

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