Divide and conquer algorithm - Advantages

Divide and conquer algorithm - Solving difficult problems. Divide and conquer is a powerful tool for solving conceptually difficult problems, such as the classic Tower of Hanoi puzzle: all it requires is a way of breaking the problem into sub-problems, of solving the trivial cases and of combining sub-problems to the original problem. Dividing the problem into sub-problems so that the sub-problems can be combined again is often the major difficulty in designing a new algorithm. Indeed, for many such problems the paradigm offers the only simple solution. ...

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Read more here: » Divide and conquer algorithm: Encyclopedia II - Divide and conquer algorithm - Advantages

One commonly argued disadvantage of a divide-and-conquer approach is that recursion is slow: the overhead of the repeated subroutine calls, along with that of storing the call stack (the state at each point in the recursion), can outweigh any advantages of the approach. This, however, depends upon the implementation style: with large enough recursive base cases, the overhead of recursion can become negligible for many problems. Another problem of a divide-and-conquer approach is that, for simple problems, it may be more complicated th ...

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Read more here: » Divide and conquer algorithm: Encyclopedia II - Divide and conquer algorithm - Disadvantages

One variation of divide and conquer is called decrease and conquer, where a solution of problem depends on only one subproblem. There are two advantages of treating this variant separately. Some problems does not need to solve all subproblems, and have a simpler conquer strategy. They can be generally solved with tail recursion. Analysis of these problems is simpler than divide and conquer.See also:

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Read more here: » Divide and conquer algorithm: Encyclopedia II - Divide and conquer algorithm - Variations

Divide-and-conquer algorithms are naturally implemented as recursive procedures. In that case, the partial sub-problems leading to the one currently being solved are implicitly stored in the procedure call stack. However, D&C solutions can also be implemented by a non-recursive algorithm that stores the partial sub-problems in some explicit data structure, such as a stack, queue, or priority queue. This approach allows more freedom in the choice of the sub-problem that is to be solved next, a feature that is important in some applications — e.g. in breadth-first recur ...

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Divide and conquer algorithm, Divide and conquer algorithm - Implementation, Divide and conquer algorithm - Variations, Divide and conquer algorithm - Advantages, Divide and conquer algorithm - Solving difficult problems, Divide and conquer algorithm - Algorithm efficiency, Divide and conquer algorithm - Parallelism, Divide and conquer algorithm - Memory access, Divide and conquer algorithm - Disadvantages

Read more here: » Divide and conquer algorithm: Encyclopedia II - Divide and conquer algorithm - Implementation