Problems in comprehending recursion and suggested solutions Export

@inproceedings{citeulike:6057082, abstract = {Recursion is a very powerful and useful problem solving strategy. But, along with pointers and dynamic data structures, many beginning programmers consider recursion to be a difficult concept to master. This paper reports on a study of upper-division undergraduate students on their difficulty in comprehending the ideas behind recursion. Three issues emerged as the points of difficulty for the students: (1) insufficient exposure to declarative thinking in a programming context (2) inadequate appreciation of the concept of functional abstraction (3) lack of a proper methodology to express a recursive solution. The paper concludes with a discussion of our approach to teaching recursion, which addresses these issues. Classroom experience indicates this approach effectively aids students' comprehension of recursion.}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, author = {Sooriamurthi, Raja}, booktitle = {ITiCSE '01: Proceedings of the 6th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education}, citeulike-article-id = {6057082}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=377458}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/377435.377458}, doi = {10.1145/377435.377458}, isbn = {1-58113-330-8}, keywords = {pedagogy, recursion}, location = {Canterbury, United Kingdom}, pages = {25--28}, posted-at = {2009-11-02 18:43:46}, priority = {0}, publisher = {ACM}, title = {Problems in comprehending recursion and suggested solutions}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/377435.377458}, year = {2001} }

TY - CONF ID - citeulike:6057082 L3 - citeulike-article-id:6057082 N2 - Recursion is a very powerful and useful problem solving strategy. But, along with pointers and dynamic data structures, many beginning programmers consider recursion to be a difficult concept to master. This paper reports on a study of upper-division undergraduate students on their difficulty in comprehending the ideas behind recursion. Three issues emerged as the points of difficulty for the students: (1) insufficient exposure to declarative thinking in a programming context (2) inadequate appreciation of the concept of functional abstraction (3) lack of a proper methodology to express a recursive solution. The paper concludes with a discussion of our approach to teaching recursion, which addresses these issues. Classroom experience indicates this approach effectively aids students' comprehension of recursion. CY - Canterbury, United Kingdom SN - 1-58113-330-8 AD - New York, NY, USA EP - 28 TI - Problems in comprehending recursion and suggested solutions PB - ACM T2 - ITiCSE '01: Proceedings of the 6th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education SP - 25 KW - pedagogy KW - recursion AU - Sooriamurthi, Raja PY - 2001/// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/377435.377458 ER -