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Moebius Stripper recalls how Big Bird taught her recursion.

My mother, startled (her toddler was bawling at the end of Sesame Street, after all), hurried into the family room and asked me what was wrong, and I blubbered something about the endless production of WET PAINT signs and how Big Bird would be making them forever because each sign told him to make another one. FOREVER. I couldn’t think of anything worse than spending one’s entire life making WET PAINT signs, and I worried that that was to be Big Bird’s fate. It troubled me more than I could put into words. That happy yellow bird, doing this for the rest of his life. And he showed such promise! Would he never get to have a family? go to the park again? And what of Snuffleuppagus?

For me, it was Dr. Suess in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back and The 500 Hats of Bartholemew Cubbins. I quite seriously assign The Cat in the Hat Comes Back as a recommended textbook in my algorithms class.

Comments

[The Great Gazoo]

What is it about The Cat in the Hat Comes Back that is relevant to your Algorithms class?

[Jeff Erickson]

If you understand the story, you understand induction.