Recursion
Logistics
- Due: Thursday, May 28th no later than 5pm.
- Submission instructions: complete the assigned number of activities in each of the assigned subsections of Chapter 16. You do not need to submit anything to Brightspace.
- Deadline reminder: once this deadline passes, Runestone Interactive will no longer allow you to collect points for completing the activities.
Key ideas
From chapter 16:
- A recursive algorithm must obey 3 laws:
- A recursive algorithm must have a base case.
- A recursive algorithm must change its state and move toward the base case.
- A recursive algorithm must call itself, recursively.
- For some problems, a recursive solution may be more elegant than an iterative solution.
Assignment
- Complete the required number of activities for each subsection in Recursion.
Grading - 10 points
- 10 points - the required number of activities were completed for each subsection before the deadline.
Grading turnaround
This reading assignment will be graded with scores in Brightspace by office hours the following class day.
Optional activities
Activity 1
The factorial of a number, written n!, is the product of the integers 1 through n. For example, 5! equals 1*2*3*4*5, or 120. We choose to define 0! to be 1, the multiplicative identity. Write two Python functions, iterative_factorial and recursive_factorial, which take in an integer greater than or equal to zero and return the factorial of the integer. iterative_factorial should use iteration and recursive_factorial should use recursion.