Computer Science 252
Problem Solving with Java

Fall 2014, The College of Saint Rose

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Agenda

• Announcements
  • Lab 6: Bouncy GUI Ball due tomorrow night
• More recursion
  • more methods of a recursive structure
  • non-graphical recursive methods

Lecture 16 Assignment

Due at the start of class, Thursday, October 23.

Please submit answers to these questions in Submission Box under "LA16" or in hard copy by the start of our next class. We will discuss these questions at the start of class, so no late submissions are accepted. Please be sure that your name is clearly indicated in all submissions.

For this lecture assignment, you will be writing a Java application - a program that is not in a WindowController class but instead has a main method that does its work. It will be similar in structure to the Powers example. Write your program in Factorial.java. As in that example, you will need to create a keyboard Scanner to read in a number from the terminal and use System.out.println to issue a prompt and report your answer.

The problem we are going to solve is that of computing factorials. From math, you know that the factorial of a positive integer n, denoted n!, is the product of all the numbers from 1 up to n.

• Write a main method of your Factorial class that prompts for and reads in a positive integer. You need not worry about error checking the input for this assignment. (2 points)
• Write an iterative method loopFactorial that takes a single int as its parameter and returns the factorial of that value. Recall that an iterative method uses loop structures like for and while loops to do its work. Also update your main method to call the loopFactorial method on the number entered by the user, and print out the value returned. (4 points)
• Write a recursive mathematical formulation, along the lines of the second power formula in the notes, for computing n!. (2 points)
• Write a recursive method recFactorial that uses that formulation to compute factorials. Also update your main method to call the recFactorial method on the number entered by the user, and print out the value returned. (6 points)

Terminology

• base case
• recursive case

Examples

• NestedSquaresSizes
• Powers