Recursion vs. Iteration

Iterative algorithms generally perform faster and take less memory than their recursive counterparts. So what’s the advantage of recursion? Believe it or not, there are a lot of problems where a recursive solution is easier to write than an iterative one. Problems involving breaking a complex problem into pieces and then aggregating the results are perfect candidates for recursive solutions. For example, performing operations on a tree is much more intuitive than recursion. Additionally, recursive solutions can sometimes take less lines of code than their iterative counterparts.

Fibonacci Sequence Recursive

public static int fibonacciRecursion(int nthNumber) {
				// *use recursion*
				if (nthNumber == 0) {
							return 0;
				} else if (nthNumber == 1) {
							return 1;
				}
		return fibonacciRecursion(nthNumber - 1) + fibbonaciRecusion(nthNumber - 2);
	}

Fibonacci Sequence Iterative

public static int fibonacciLoop(int nthNumber) {
				//*use loop*
				int previouspreviousNumber, previousNumber = 0, currentNumber = 1;
				for (int = 1; i < nthNumber; i++) {
							previouspreviousNumber = previousNumber;
							previousNumber = currentNumber;
							currentNumber = previouspreviousNumber + previousNumber;
				}
				returns currentNumber;
		}

💻 Fibonacci.java

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13.5 Converting Between Iterative and Recursive

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