User:Rajiv pnp/randomstubs

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[edit] The Bourne Ultimatum (2007 Film)

The Bourne Ultimatum is a 2007 film directed by Paul Greengrass, that is the 3rd in the Bourne trilogy - the sequels being The Bourne Identity(2001) and The Bourne Supremacy (2003). The film stars Matt Damon reprising the role of Jason Bourne with Joan Allen, Julia Stiles and others. Just like the prequels, Ultimatum is loosely based on Ludlum's novel of the same name - it borrows the main characters, but has a completely different plot. Upon its release, it was both a critical and commercial success, with special acclaim for Matt Damon's subdued angst-ridden performance.--Rajiv pnp


[edit] Adversarial Game Playing

The minimax algorithm was one of the first for Adversarial Game Playing like Chess. But since it required the expansion of the Game Tree as far as possible, it was found to be a computationally expensive method. Hence, pruning techniques like Alpha-Beta pruning were developed, by which the algorithm can choose to prune off sections of a tree which weren't giving any obvious benefit.


[edit] A Tout Le Monde

'A Tout Le Monde', French for 'To all the world', is a song by the Thrash Metal/Speed Metal/Heavy Metal band Megadeth from their album Youthanasia. The song runs like a dying man's declaration to his friends of how much he would miss them. Yet the man wishes that his friends remember him for his life than for his death. In a typical Megadeth fashion, the song has moderately long electric-guitar solos with effects along with the quintessential distortion-guitar in the background. Besides being a relatively hard song, it yet retains an element of poise and reflection, making it indeed a great song.


[edit] Recursion

Recursion in Computer Science refers to an algorithmic technique of expressing the solution of a problem in terms of a smaller instance of the problem itself. Recursion often forms the backbone of the Divide and Conquer approach to problem-solving.

The simplest example of Recursion would be in factorial computation, as explained below : 'factorial(N) = N * factorial(N-1);' While there exists a non-recursive technique, it is the simplicity and over-whelming obviousness of the Recursive algorithm that makes it such a favourite amongst programmers.

Recursive algorithms are often easy to stumble upon due to sheer human intuition to problem solving and moreover, they are usually extremely short to implement/code. However, one pitfall of recursive algorithms is their [[time complexity|time] and [[space complexity|space] complexities, which tend to be exponential or sometimes factorial, hence making them computationally expensive & inefficient. A classic case-study in this regard is the Matrix Determinant calculation, which when run on a recursive algorithm runs on factorial complexity. When the same computation is done using a non-recursive algorithm, it runs with a time complexity of N-squared.

While implementing recursion, one must take care that there is some mechanism to terminate/halt recursion. In the absence of such terminating condition, recursion just keeps continuing indefinitely till all memory resources are consumed, often leading to computer crashes.

[edit] Indefinite Recursion Code Example

indefinite() printf("\n\nJust wait and watch your computer crash!"); indefinite(); printf("\n\nI have an Easter-Egg to offer! Unfortunately, you will never reach here!"); end routine();