Algorithms For Dummies

Casting recursion dynamically

The basis of dynamic programming is to achieve something as effective as brute-

force searching without actually spending all the time doing the computations 

required by a brute-force approach. You achieve the result by trading time for disk 

space or memory, which is usually done by creating a data structure (a hash table, 

an array, or a data matrix) to store previous results. Using lookup tables allows 

you to access results without having to perform a calculation a second time.

The technique of storing previous function results and using them instead of the 

function is memoization, a term you shouldn’t confuse with memorization. 

Memoization derives from memorandum, the Latin word for “to be remembered.”

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CHAPTER 16