Exponential sum using recursion in Python - python-3.x

Question

I found here: exponential sum using recursion.python
Exactly the same problem with the same conditions to implement.
A brief description: We have started studying recursion and got some questions to solve using only recursion without any loop.
So we are asked to write a function calculating the exponential sum.
So here are my tries:
def exp_n_x(n, x):
if n <= 0:
return 1
return (x/n)*exp_n_x(n-1, x)
It actually only calculates the n'th one, without summing up the others to i=0.
I tried to make the function sum every exponential element so:
def exp_n_x(n, x):
if n <= 0:
return 1
sum = (x/n)*exp_n_x(n-1, x)
n = n - 1
return sum + (x/n)*exp_n_x(n-1, x)
But it doesn't help me...
Thanks.

Answer 1

You are pretty close to a solution in the first function, but you are missing two critical things: you need to raise x to the power of n and divide it by n! (n-factorial). The factorial function is the product of all integers from 1 to n, with a special case that 0! is 1. Also, you are creating a product when you need a sum. Putting these together you have:
def factorial(n):
if n < 2:
return 1
return n * factorial(n - 1)
def exp_n_x(n, x):
if n < 1:
return 1
return x ** n / factorial(n) + exp_n_x(n - 1, x)

Answer 2

I think your problem is that the sum you're computing has terms that can be computed from the previous terms, but not (as far as I can see) from the previous sums. So you may need to have two separate recursive parts to your code. One computes the values of the next term based on the previous term, and one that adds the new term to the previous sum.
def term(n, x):
if n <= 0:
return 1
return x / n * term(n-1, x)
def exp_sum(n, x):
if n <= 0:
return 1
return exp_sum(n-1, x) + term(n, x)
This is hideously inefficient, since the terms for the smaller n values get computed over and over. But that's probably OK for learning about recursion (I expect you'll learn about ways to avoid this issue with memoziation or dynamic programming eventually).
Note that you can combine the two functions into one, as long as you don't mind changing the function signature and returning two values at once (in a tuple) from the recursion. You could add a non-recursive helper function to make the user-facing function work as expected:
def exp_sum_recursive(n, x): # this function returns term, sum tuples
if n <= 0:
return 1, 1
term, sum = exp_sum_recursive(n-1, x)
term *= x / n # each new term is based off of the previous term
return term, sum + term # the new sum adds the new term to the old sum
def exp_sum(n, x): # this is a non-recursive helper function
return exp_sum_recursive(n, x)[1] # it only returns the sum from the recursive version

Answer 3

Since you've achieved recursion with exp_n_x() why throw an inefficient recursive factorial() in the mix when Python already provides us with one:
from math import factorial
def exp_n_x(n, x):
return 1 if n < 1 else x ** n / factorial(n) + exp_n_x(n - 1, x)