Lecture8.ppt.ppt

Comparing Sorts Hard Problems Using divide-and-conquer we could design efficient algorithms for searching and sorting problems. Divide and conquer and recursion are very powerful techniques for algorithm design. Not all problems have efficient solutions! Towers of Hanoi One elegant application of recursion is to the Towers of Hanoi or Towers of Brahma puzzle attributed to édouard Lucas. There are three posts and sixty-four concentric disks shaped like a pyramid. The goal is to move the disks from one post to another, following these three rules: Towers of Hanoi Only one disk may be moved at a time. A disk may not be “set aside”. It may only be stacked on one of the three posts. A larger disk may never be placed on top of a smaller one. Towers of Hanoi If we label the posts as A, B, and C, we could express an algorithm to move a pile of disks from A to C, using B as temporary storage, as:Move disk from A to CMove disk from A to BMove disk from C to B Towers of Hanoi Let’s consider some easy cases – 1 diskMove disk from A to C 2 disksMove disk from A to BMove disk from A to CMove disk from B to C Towers of Hanoi 3 disksTo move the largest disk to C, we first need to move the two smaller disks out of the way. These two smaller disks form a pyramid of size 2, which we know how to solve.Move a tower of two from A to BMove one disk from A to CMove a tower of two from B to C Towers of Hanoi Algorithm: move n-disk tower from source to destination via resting placemove n-1 disk tower from source to resting placemove 1 disk tower from source to destinationmove n-1 disk tower from resting place to destination What should the base case be? Eventually we will be moving a tower of size 1, which can be moved directly without needing a recursive call. Towers of Hanoi In moveTower, n is the size of the tower (integer), and source, dest, and temp are the three posts, represented by “A”, “B”, and “C”. def moveTower(n, source, dest, temp): if n == 1: prin