Applications of 'Towers of Hanoi'
The Tower of Hanoi is frequently used in psychological research on problem solving. There also exists a variant of this task called Tower of London for neuropsychological diagnosis and treatment of executive functions.
The Tower of Hanoi is also used as Backup rotation scheme when performing computer data Backups where multiple tapes/media are involved.
As mentioned, the Tower of Hanoi is popular for teaching recursive algorithms to beginning programming students. A pictorial version of this puzzle is programmed into the emacs editor, accessed by typing M-x hanoi. There is also a sample algorithm written in Prolog.
The Tower of Hanoi is also used as a test by neuropsychologists trying to evaluate frontal lobe deficits.
