# Recursive Karatsuba multiplication

By 0x7df, Sun 11 May 2014, modified Wed 14 October 2020, in category Misc

The Karatsuba algorithm for multiplication is a good candidate for teaching recursion in programming. It allows you to simplify the multiplication of two large numbers into three multiplications of smaller numbers, and applying this recursively mean the mulitplications can be reduced as far as one wants, e.g. until only single- digit numbers are involved.

To multiply two large numbers, $$x$$ and $$y$$, note that these can be decomposed into:

$$x = x_1 10^m + x_0$$
$$y = y_1 10^m + y_0$$

where $$x_0$$ and $$y_0$$ are less than $$10^m$$. (In general bases other than 10 can of course be used.)

The product $$xy$$ is then:

$$xy = \left( x_1 10^m + x_0 \right) \left( y_1 10^m + y_0 \right)$$
$$xy = x_1 y_1 10^{2m} + \left(x_1 y_0 + x_0 y_1\right) 10^m + x_0 y_0$$

which involves four multiplications. This can be reduced to three by recognising that:

$$x_1 y_0 + x_0 y_1 = \left(x_1 + x_0\right) \left(y_1 + y_0 \right) - x_1y_1 - x_0y_0$$

the final two terms of which are already computed.

The recursive implementation of this s most efficient when $$m = n/2$$.

An implementation in Python is as follows:

import math

def multiply(x,y):
"""
Karatsuba multiplication of two positive integers
"""

strx = str(x)
stry = str(y)
n = max(len(strx),len(stry))

# Base case
if n == 1:
return x * y

m = n // 2

# Prevents empty string arising when extracting a and c later
while len(strx) < n:
strx = "0" + strx
while len(stry) < n:
stry = "0" + stry

x1 = int(strx[:-m])
x0 = int(strx[-m:])
y1 = int(stry[:-m])
y0 = int(stry[-m:])

# The three recursive multiplies
z2 = multiply(x1, y1)
z0 = multiply(x0, y0)
z1 = multiply((x1 + x0), (y1 + y0)) - z2 - z0

result = int(str(z2) + 2 * m2 *"0") + int(str(z1) + m2 * "0") + z0

# Test correctness
assert(result == x * y)

return result


The use of string manipulation to decompose the inputs is marginally faster than using integer arithmetic, which is fine for a simple demo, but means negative numbers cannot be handled, and base-10 is hard-wired; but re- implementing in a way that permits negative inputs, and allows other bases to be chosen at run-time, would be a good exercise.