9
votes
Accepted
Is induction or recursion easier to understand?
One thing that you have to keep in mind here, is that you don't need to understand recursion to implement it. There is a big difference between "we were taught to do it like that, I implement it and ...
- 1,298
5
votes
Should I gave a make up lecture if some students found what I taught is a bit unclear?
My philosophy is schedule über alles. As an academic, time is your most constrained resource. This goes for balancing the hours in your work vs. research, teaching, and service requirements. And in ...
- 23.6k
4
votes
Is induction or recursion easier to understand?
As a disclaimer, I am a CS teacher, so I teach both concepts within that context. However, there is no doubt in my mind that induction is far harder for students to grasp. I have not been able to ...
- 351
4
votes
Accepted
Should I gave a make up lecture if some students found what I taught is a bit unclear?
I am inclined to choose the last one. Maybe the majority have a different feeling about the lecture.
If you run a survey and the majority of students "thought the last lecture was too difficult&...
- 8,856
3
votes
Need to learn recurrence relation discrete mathematics
I liked this Discrete Mathematics: An Open Introduction, by Oscar Levin, for generating functions, so I'm guessing it will be good for recurrence relations.
- 19.4k
2
votes
Motivation for Fibonacci: Bees
After looking at Tony Jacobs argument, here is an argument of my own.
Start with a single male. At each generation, let $m_n$ and $f_n$ be the total number of males and females respectively, and let ...
- 1,078
2
votes
Accepted
Motivation for Fibonacci: Bees
You can see it by breaking the numbers $s_n$ into parts: $s_n=f_n+m_n$, which represent the number of female and male bees, respectively, at each level of the family tree.
To find $f_{n+1}$, we note ...
- 705
2
votes
Is induction or recursion easier to understand?
In the context of programming, it seems more natural to distinguish recursion from iteration than from induction, as iteration is the algorithmic realization of iteration.
In the context of ...
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1
vote
Need to learn recurrence relation discrete mathematics
Better yet, I very much liked generatingfunctionology by Herbert Wilf; it is the go-to text for what you are seeking. It addresses generating functions, and considerable help for understanding ...
- 2,075
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