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Monday, May 22, 2006

Recursion Part 6: References and Further Information

The following is a part of a series of articles I had written on recursion.

This, the final part of the series contains sources for the articles and where to get further information.

All Parts:

Recursion Part 1: Introduction to recursion
Recursion Part 2: Tail recursion, Accumulators and Iteration
Recursion Part 3: Exercises in tail recursion
Recursion Part 4: Tree Recursion and Dynamic Programming
Recursion Part 5: Structural and Generative Recursion
Recursion Part 6: References and Further Information


The best way to learn about recursion is to learn a language that doesn't support iteration. Scheme is a good language to learn in this context. A Scheme interpreter can be got from here

Another good resource is the 6.001 course from MIT. The course material for this course is available for free.

Two highly recommended books:
1. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (also called as The Wizard Book). There is an Indian edition, but not very easy to find.
2. How to design programs. This book is also available in an Indian Edition, but there is often not much stock.

Both books use the Scheme language, so they also serve the purpose of those trying to learn Scheme. Both books are also available for free on the Internet.

For more on dynamic programming, see Chapter 15 of the book 'Introduction to Algorithms' by Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest. This is a college textbook and is available in any bookstore. Most other books on algorithms also include a chapter on dynamic programming. Otherwise searching Google for "dynamic programming" will provide lots of articles on this topic.


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

FWIW, information related to indian editions of the books mentioned.

I purchased few copies of SICP (Indian Edition) from Orient Longmant Bangalore. This was two months back. http://www.orientlongman.com/display.asp?isbn=81-7371-527-0
Bangalore Orient Longman address- http://www.orientlongman.com/our_network.asp#

HTDP, Prentice Hall India (Chennai) sales people cribbed to me that they have lot of copies and no one buys them. They were told that this is a good book, but from their experience it does not move much.

Thanks,
Rajesh Babu

Siddhi said...

Thanks for that information Rajesh! It took me almost a year to get SICP and HTDP, so this is good information that you've provided. I had looked through the indian book lists of the publishers, but these books were not on the list. I found one copy of HTDP at Gangarams in Bangalore about a year back, and got a copy of SICP from Landmark in Chennai a few months ago.

Of course, both books are freely available on the Internet.