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From: rbutterworth@watmath.waterloo.edu (Ray Butterworth)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,uw.general
Subject: Re: Recursion Summary
Message-ID: <1990Oct25.145909.12777@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: 25 Oct 90 14:59:09 GMT
References: <1990Oct23.211651.10227@contact.uucp>
Distribution: na
Organization: Math Faculty Computing Facility, University of Waterloo
Lines: 30

In article <1990Oct23.211651.10227@contact.uucp> rrwood@contact.uucp (roy wood) writes:
>As well, business
>folks in general don't often come up with much need for recursion, so they
>have trouble believing that it has "real world" applications.  So it goes.

In business, recursion is called "delegation".

Your boss says to you "I need blah1 blah2 blah3 for Friday!".
You think "I can do blah1, but blah2 and blah3 I'll have to give
to my subordinates", so you go back to your desk and phone Fred
and say "I need blah2.1 blah2.2 blah2.3 for Thursday!", and phone
Joe and say "I need blah3.1 blah3.2 blah3.3 for Thursday!", and
then procede with blah1 assuming they will get blah2 and blah3
done for you.  Joe and Fred are now in the same situation you were
in and will either do the work themselves or delegate it to their
subordinates.  etc.

If you think of the tree structure of a standard business hierarchy,
some requirement will start at a high node and it will divide and
spread out down the tree, with the decisions at each node being a
recursive process.  The actual work gets done at the lowest nodes
in the tree where the terminating conditions occur (i.e. if you
aren't a boss you've got to do it yourself).

Similarly, things can go up the tree too.  You tell you boss "it
would really be good for the company if such and such were done".
He'll either say "shut up stupid", "sounds good, let's do it", or
"I'll have to think about it".  The last one probably means he'll
go to his boss and say "it would really be good for the company if
such and such were done".  etc.