Divide, Conquer, Combine

• This is chapter 5.
• Divide, Conquer, and Combine is a problem solving technique
  • Break the problem into sub parts.
  • Solve the problem on these sub parts.
  • Combine the solutions to form a single final solution.
• This frequently involves at least a recursive definition.
  • Do we need to review recursion?
    • Factorial
    • Fibonacci
    • Binary Search
    • Merge Sort.
• Analyzing code with recursion frequently involves solving a recurrence relation.
  • This is a function defined recursively.
  • In my experience, some of these can become tricky.
  • You should have studied this in MATH 270, but ....
• They note that divide and conquer works well when you have a polynomial time brute force algorithm
  • You can generally reduce this with a divide-conquer-combine algorithm.