Recursive

Recursive

Recursion

Recursion is the process of choosing a starting term in a sequence of numbers and repeatedly applying the same process to each term to arrive at the next term. Recursion requires that you know the value of the term immediately before the term you are trying to find. It is often used in computer programming. It helps to find the patterns that are occurring.

The nursery rhyme "This is the House That Jack Built," is an example of recursion. Please read through it and try to put into words what is happening. Select the following link to read the Mother Goose nursery rhyme:

"This is the House That Jack Built"

An everyday example of recursion is a TV camera that is focused on a scene that includes a TV monitor displaying the image recorded by the camera. The image seen on the monitor includes an image of the monitor displaying an image of the monitor and so on - that's also recursion.