Author: Gaurav Sharma

Exercise 2.6.  In case representing pairs as procedures wasn’t mind-boggling enough, consider that, in a language that can manipulate procedures, we can get by without numbers (at least insofar as nonnegative integers are concerned) by implementing 0 and the operation of adding 1 as

(define zero (lambda (f) (lambda (x) x)))

(define (add-1 n)
(lambda (f) (lambda (x) (f ((n f) x)))))

This representation is known as Church numerals, after its inventor, Alonzo Church, the logician who invented the calculus.

Define one and two directly (not in terms of zero and add-1). (Hint: Use substitution to evaluate (add-1 zero)). Give a direct definition of the addition procedure + (not in terms of repeated application of add-1).

 

Exercise 2.5.  Show that we can represent pairs of nonnegative integers using only numbers and arithmetic operations if we represent the pair a and b as the integer that is the product 2^a 3^b. Give the corresponding definitions of the procedures cons, car, and cdr.

 

 

Exercise 2.4.  Here is an alternative procedural representation of pairs. For this representation, verify that (car (cons x y)) yields x for any objects x and y.

(define (cons x y)
(lambda (m) (m x y)))

(define (car z)
(z (lambda (p q) p)))

What is the corresponding definition of cdr? (Hint: To verify that this works, make use of the substitution model of section 1.1.5.)

 

 

Exercise 2.3.  Implement a representation for rectangles in a plane. (Hint: You may want to make use of exercise 2.2.) In terms of your constructors and selectors, create procedures that compute the perimeter and the area of a given rectangle. Now implement a different representation for rectangles. Can you design your system with suitable abstraction barriers, so that the same perimeter and area procedures will work using either representation?

 

 

Exercise 2.2.  Consider the problem of representing line segments in a plane. Each segment is represented as a pair of points: a starting point and an ending point. Define a constructor make-segment and selectors start-segment and end-segment that define the representation of segments in terms of points. Furthermore, a point can be represented as a pair of numbers: the x coordinate and the y coordinate. Accordingly, specify a constructor make-point and selectors x-point and y-point that define this representation. Finally, using your selectors and constructors, define a procedure midpoint-segment that takes a line segment as argument and returns its midpoint (the point whose coordinates are the average of the coordinates of the endpoints). To try your procedures, you’ll need a way to print points:

(define (print-point p)
(newline)
(display "(")
(display (x-point p))
(display ",")
(display (y-point p))
(display ")"))

 

Exercise 2.1.  Define a better version of make-rat that handles both positive and negative arguments. Make-rat should normalize the sign so that if the rational number is positive, both the numerator and denominator are positive, and if the rational number is negative, only the numerator is negative.

 

Exercise 1.44.  The idea of smoothing a function is an important concept in signal processing.

If f is a function and dx is some small number, then the smoothed version of f is the function whose value at a point x is the average of f(x – dx), f(x), and f(x + dx).

Write a procedure smooth that takes as input a procedure that computes f and returns a procedure that computes the smoothed f. It is sometimes valuable to repeatedly smooth a function (that is, smooth the smoothed function, and so on) to obtained the n-fold smoothed function. Show how to generate the n-fold smoothed function of any given function using smooth and repeated from exercise 1.43.

 

Exercise 1.43.  If f is a numerical function and n is a positive integer, then we can form the nth repeated application of f, which is defined to be the function whose value at x is f(f(...(f(x))...)). For example, if f is the function x x + 1, then the nth repeated application of f is the function x x + n. If f is the operation of squaring a number, then the nth repeated application of f is the function that raises its argument to the 2ⁿth power. Write a procedure that takes as inputs a procedure that computes f and a positive integer n and returns the procedure that computes the nth repeated application of f. Your procedure should be able to be used as follows:

((repeated square 2) 5)
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Hint: You may find it convenient to use compose from exercise 1.42.

 

 

Exercise 1.42.  Let f and g be two one-argument functions. The composition f after g is defined to be the function x f(g(x)). Define a procedure compose that implements composition. For example, if inc is a procedure that adds 1 to its argument,

((compose square inc) 6)
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