Could I ask for physical analogies or metaphors for recursion?

Question

I am suddenly in a recursive language class (sml) and recursion is not yet physically sensible for me. I\'m thinking about the way a floor of square tiles is sometimes a mo

Answer 1

This is odd, and not quite a physical example except insofar as dance-movement is physical. It occurred to me the other morning. I call it "Written in Latin, solved in Hebrew." Huh? Surely you are saying "Huh?"

By it I mean that encoding a recursion is usually done left-to-right, in the Latin alphabet style: "Def fac(n) = n*(fac(n-1))." The movement style is "outermost case to base case."

But (please check me on this) at least in this simple case, it seems the easiest way to evaluate it is right-to-left, in the Hebrew alphabet style: Start from the base case and move outward to the outermost case:

                                                   (fac(0) = 1)
                                      (fac(1) = 1)*(fac(0) = 1)
                             (fac(2))*(fac(1) = 1)*(fac(0) = 1)
       (fac(n)*(fac(n-1)*...*(fac(2))*(fac(1) = 1)*(fac(0) = 1)
(*  Easier order to calculate <<<<<<<<<<< is leftwards, 
    base outwards to outermost case;
    more difficult order to calculate >>>>>> is rightwards, 
    outermost case to base  *)

Then you do not have to suspend items on the left while awaiting the results of calculations further right. "Dance Leftwards" instead of "Dance rightwards"?