Making Heads or Tails out of Recursion and Combinatorial Math

GNU — GNU’s Not Unix

I thought I’d take a look at two topics at once and make some fun by mashing them together. Today’s topic is recursion. In computer science (and in math, although we call the equation a recurrence relation) recursion is an often misunderstood concept causing lots of panic and anxiety. In reality - it’s pretty easy once you wrap you head around the idiom.

What is recursion?

When we define a function in such a way that it calls itself, we’ve defined a recusive function. The most basic example is the Factorial function, $f(n)=n!$. We define the function recursively by defining it in reference to itself. So, recursively, we define $f(n)$ as:

Basic Math Concepts made Complicated Quickly

Fibonacci - What’s in a Name…

The man, the myth

Leonardo Fibonacci was a mathematician who lived in the middle ages and was held in high esteem for his prowess as a talented mathematician. Best known for his Fibonacci Sequence which seemingly is simple to define, yet it’s limit point (of the ratio of the last two elements of the sequence) (also known as the Greek letter Phi). The mysticism around the Golden ratio abounds due to its correlation with many natural element - both living things as well as dynamic processes.