The Divide-and-Conquer Paradigm分而治之范式

In general, the divide-and-conquer paradigm consists of the following steps.

The divide step. The input is partitioned into 1 ≤ p ≤ n parts.

The conquer step. This step consists of performing p recursive call(s) if the problem size is greater than some predefined threshold n 0 .

  The combine step. The solutions to the p recursive call(s) are combined to obtain the desired output.

 The combine step is very crucial to the performance of virtually all divide-and-conquer algorithms, as the efficiency of the algorithm is largely dependent on how judiciously this step is implemented .

 the divide step is invariant in almost all divide-and-conquer algorithms : Partition the input data into p parts, and proceed to the conquer step. In many divide-and-conquer algorithms, it takes O ( n ) time or even only O (1) time.

A divide-and-conquer algorithm has the following format .

 If the size of the instance I is “small”, then solve the problem using a straightforward method and return the answer. Otherwise, continue to the next step .

  Divide the instance I into p subinstances I 1 , I 2 , . . . , I p of approximately the same size.

  Recursively call the algorithm on each subinstance I j , 1 ≤ j ≤ p , to obtain p partial solutions.

 Combine the results of the p partial solutions to obtain the solution to the original instance I . Return the solution of instance I.

一般来说，分而治之模式包括以下步骤。

分割 步骤。输入被分割成 1≤p ≤ n 个部分。

治之 步骤。如果问题大小大于某个预定义阈值n0，则执行p 次递归 调用。

合并 步骤。将p 个递归 调用的解结合起来，以获得所需的输出。

合并步骤对几乎所有分而治之算法的性能都至关重要，因为算法的效率在很大程度上取决于如何明智地执行这一步骤。

在几乎 所有的分而治之算法中，除法步骤都是不变的： 将输入数据分成p 部分 ，然后进入征服步骤。在许多分而治之算法中，这一步需要O(n) 时间，甚至只需要O(1) 时间。

分而治之算法的格式如下。

如果实例I 的大小为 "小"，则使用直接方法解决问题并返回答案。否则，继续下一步。

将实例I 分成p 个子实例 I1、I2、...... , Ip大小大致相同。

在每个子实例Ij 上递归调用算法，1 ≤j ≤ p，得到p 个部分 解。

合并p 个部分 解的结果，得到原始实例I 的解。