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In computability theory, course-of-values recursion is a technique for defining number-theoretic functions by recursion. In a definition of a function f by course-of-values recursion, the value of f is computed from the sequence ⟨ f , f , … , f ⟩ {\displaystyle \langle f,f,\ldots ,f\rangle }.
The fact that such definitions can be converted into definitions using a simpler form of recursion is often used to prove that functions defined by course-of-values recursion are primitive recursive. Contrary to course-of-values recursion, in primitive recursion the computation of a value of a function requires only the previous value; for example, for a 1-ary primitive recursive function g the value of g is computed only from g and n.