Читать книгу Algorithms For Dummies - John Paul Mueller, John Mueller Paul, Luca Massaron - Страница 34

If solving problems were easy, everyone would do it. However, the world is still filled with unsolved problems and the condition isn’t likely to change anytime soon, for one simple reason: Problems often appear so large that no solution is imaginable. Ancient warriors faced a similar problem. An opposing army would seem so large and their forces so small as to make the problem of winning a war unimaginably hard, perhaps impossible. Yet, by dividing the opposing army into small pieces and attacking it a little at a time, a small army could potentially defeat a much larger opponent. (The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Napoleon Bonaparte were all great users of the divide-and-conquer strategy; see Napoleon For Dummies, by J. David Markham [Wiley], for details.)

You face the same problem as those ancient warriors. Often, the resources at your disposal seem quite small and inadequate. However, by dividing a huge problem into small pieces so that you can understand each piece, you can eventually create a solution that works for the problem as a whole. Algorithms have this premise at their core: to use steps to solve problems one small piece at a time. The following sections help you understand the divide-and-conquer approach to problem solving in more detail.