Week 6 of CSC148: Assignment 1 pt. 2 and Trees

Last week I had ended my post off before I tackled the recursive bits of assignment 1. I correctly predicted it would be the hardest part of the assignment but in hindsight (like everything) it seems easy. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. Once I had figured out how to translate the mathematical equation for the minimum number of moves of a four stool version of the Tower of Hanoi into Python code, which wasn't too bad after Danny had offered some guidance in one of his lectures, I ran into a wall when it came to return the 'i' value that corresponded to each 'n' value, 'n' being the number of disks--or in this cases cheeses--in the game. I solved this by putting my recursive function inside another function so the tuples I was appending too weren't being wiped every time the function recursed. Looking back I could have used another tool recently brought up in class: namespaces, or more specifically, defining the scope of the list I was using to store the tuples outside of the function (i.e. global perhaps). When all of this was said and done, creating the recursive function to actually move the four cheeses was a breeze, once again due to the guidance offered by Danny and the TAs over Piazza. Overall, the assignment went great.

The latest concept to have come up in class was the use of tree structures to help visualize recursion. The 'paths' from node to node and the ideas of parent and children nodes all stemming from a root definitely redefined how I view recursion. I could see immediately why we were being taught this concept, it seems intuitive to me almost immediately. Understanding the code and the tree ADT as a whole is the next step for me right now in understanding the CSC148 course material, particularly now that my midterm studying is about to begin.