Analyzing Divide-and-Conquer Algorithms

Definition: A RECURRENCE EQUATION or RECURRENCE describes the running time of a recursive algorithm on a problem of size n in terms of the running time of the algorithm on smaller inputs.

For small enough input size (n $\leq$ c, for example), running time is constant.

• Example: T(n) = $\Theta(n^0)$ = $\Theta(1)$
• Sorting one element in Merge Sort