How to explain recursion and iteration?

Question

How to explain recursion and iteration to someone without using formulas or single line of code? Difference betwen them, why to use one over another?

(a.k.a : How to explain recursion and iteration to my grandmother)

(a.k.a : How to explain difference between recursion and iteration to my grandmother)

Every one had some kind Tower of Hanoi problem and there they figure out recursion solution and iterative solution. But if you have college (e.g. PM) that dont have idea neither about programing or mathematics how to explain it ?

I learned recursion when I was pretty young. I wrote games in BASIC using "goto" statements, then someone told me that was bad so I changed them all to "gosub". It blew the stack and I learned what recursion is. — DanielV, Dec 29 '14 at 14:42
thanks. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3021/what-is-recursion-and-when-should-i-use-it/2767157#2767157 This is nice answer. — malakrsnaslava, Dec 29 '14 at 14:51
@DanielV there is a small chance that my grandma will wrote BASIC game but I will ask her. — malakrsnaslava, Dec 29 '14 at 14:53
Come on, man. I can not explain where are "messages" in the phone to my granny. You have no chance. — Jihad, Dec 29 '14 at 15:08
@Jihad +1 ;) God point, but I think if she could finish college maybe there is chance that shee will get this to! btw. Grany was figure of speech — malakrsnaslava, Dec 29 '14 at 15:10

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 29 '14 at 15:13

5

Today is not the first april, but...

To explain recursion you need to explain recursion.

answered Dec 29 '14 at 15:13

Jihad

3,284

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#safe=off&q=recursion&qscrl=1 Google alredy had it :) – malakrsnaslava Dec 29 '14 at 15:14
@malakrsnaslava lol, even Google is joking about recursion. – Jihad Dec 29 '14 at 15:15

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 07 '19 at 12:23

Just use the every day words :)

Iteration You have 15 potatoes to peel :

For each potato, peel that potato.

recursion You need to turn a chocolate plate into chocolate chips:

Split the chocolate pieces in half (and proceed again with the pieces you obtained until each piece is small enough).

score 0 · Answer 3 · 2019-06-07T12:38:53.403

Recursion is a method to solve a problem in terms of a smaller problem of the same nature.

To find a word in a dictionary, you open it somewhere, check on which side the word can be and perform a search for the word in that side only. So to find you can... find.

Iteration can be seen as a particular form of recursion where one of the subproblems has unit size. Like flipping the pages one at a time instead of by blocks.

How to explain recursion and iteration?

3 Answers3