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A Visual Introduction to Algorithms

Recursive factorial

Explore how to calculate the factorial of a non-negative integer using recursion by understanding the base case and recursive case. Learn to break down the problem into subproblems and solve factorials step-by-step with this foundational recursion example.

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For positive values of nn, let's write n!n! as we did before, as a product of numbers starting from nn and going down to 1:n!=n⋅(n−1)⋯2⋅11: n! = n⋅(n−1)⋯2⋅1. But notice that (n−1)⋯2(n−1)⋯2⋅ 11 is another way of writing (n−1)!(n−1)!, and so we can say that n!=n⋅(n−1)!n! = n⋅(n−1)!. Did you see what we just did? We wrote n!n! as a product in ...