Lent '08 - Day 7: Search Algorithms and Spiritual Growth (Part 1)

In computer science, one set of problems you study concern graphs or trees. These graphs or trees hold information, and there are multiple algorithms for searching for information within a graph/tree. Two common algorithms are:

• Depth-first search - one starts at the root and explores as far as possible along each branch before backtracking.
  
• Breadth-first search - begin at the root node and explore all the neighboring nodes. Then for each of those nearest nodes, explores their unexplored neighbor nodes, and so on, until finding the goal.

The image to the right is an example of a breadth-first search. It traverses the graph in this order: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h. A depth-first search would traverse the graph in this order: a, b, d, e, h, c, f, g.

So anyways, what does this have to do with spiritual growth? I see these search algorithms play out in my life, but it'll take some more time to flesh my thoughts out. Since Kara and I celebrated Valentine's day tonight, I haven't had as much time to think, but stay tuned for part 2!