Abstract
One concept in computer science that is very difficult for the beginner to grasp, and equally difficult for the instructor to present in a straight-forward understandable manner, is the concept of recursion. Since this is a fundamental concept through which the amount of computer code required for some algorithms can be drastically reduced, an instructor must discuss this area early in a student's career, even though he runs the risk of confusing a few students for a lecture or two. This paper presents a method of describing recursive procedure calls that utilizes a form of self-generating state diagram. This approach enables the student to visually keep track of where program control is located at each moment during execution.
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Index Terms
A graphical technique for describing recursion
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