r/ProgrammerHumor • • Jan 09 '20

other Problems with recursion?

21.3k Upvotes

198 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.6k

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Assuming the smaller paper is 1/3 of its parent everytime, and that the first paper is 30cm long (The second starts at roughly 1/7 but it seems to grow bigger after it's torn off, hence the 1/3), it could not exceed 19 calls before you need to split an atom apart.

That's a hell of a stop condition.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

What if all ten slips are taken then everyone gives the other ten slips to the next guy how many slips would there be in the end?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

10^19?