Decrease and Conquer Variations
1. Decrease by a constant: (usually by 1): instance is reduced by the same
constant on each iteration
– Insertion sort
– Graph traversal algorithms (DFS and BFS)
– Topological sorting
– Algorithms for generating permutations, subsets
2. Decrease by a constant factor (usually by half): instance is reduced by same
multiple on each iteration
– Binary search
– Bisection method
– Fake-coin problem
3. Variable size decrease: size reduction pattern varies from one iteration to the
next
– Euclid’s algorithm
– Interpolation search