ran across this term while perusing computer fora...
dichotomic search

just some interesting things there.

and while you're there, you'll love this:
memoize

Memoization is a great word, and it's been around since being coined in '68 by Donald Michie at the University of Edinburgh. I've used it before in LISP programs, and it certainly speeds up code. It's a sort of a flipsideways of lazy evaluation.

Right you are. Got it. Dichotomic search. That's what Mean Joe Green did when he anchored the Steel Curtain defense of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Seventies. Joe would wrap his big arms around everybody in the offensive backfield and then begin the sort. He categorized players into dichotomous groups: those who did not have the ball and the one who did. He would eliminate from his grasp the former until all he had left was the latter. Dichotomic search. There you are.