Lecture 1

Learning objectives

After this class, you should be able to:

1. Describe the Tower of Hanoi problem.
2. Formulate the minimum number of moves for the above problem as a recurrence.
3. Determine a closed form expression for the minimum number of moves for the above problem, and prove its correctness using induction.
4. Given a variant of the above problem, derive a recurrence for the minimum number of moves, and solve it to determine a closed form expression for the minimum number of moves.

Reading assignment

1. Sec 1.1.
2. Page 5.

Exercises and review questions

• Questions on current lecture's material
  1. Exercises 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.10.

• Questions on next lecture's material
  1. Draw 5 lines such that they divide the plane into as many regions are possible.