Simpson’s Rule is a more accurate method of numerical integration than the method illustrated above. Using Simpson’s Rule, the integral of a function f between a and b is approximated as
h / 3 * (y0 + 4y1 + 2y2 + 4y3 + 2y4 + ... + 4yn-1 + yn),
where h = (b − a)/n, for some even integer n, and yk = f (a + kh). (Increasing n increases the accuracy of the approximation.) Define a procedure that takes as arguments f, a, b, and n and returns the value of the integral, computed using Simpson’s Rule. Use your procedure to integrate cube
between 0 and 1 (with n = 100 and n = 1000), and compare the results to those of the integral
procedure shown above.
The sum
procedure above generates a linear recursion. The procedure can be rewritten so that the sum is performed iteratively. Show how to do this by filling in the missing expressions in the following definition:
(define (sum term a next b)
(define (iter a result)
(if ⟨??⟩
⟨??⟩
(iter ⟨??⟩ ⟨??⟩)))
(iter ⟨??⟩ ⟨??⟩))
a. The sum
procedure is only the simplest of a vast number of similar abstractions that can be captured as higher-order procedures. Write an analogous procedure called product
that returns the product of the values of a function at points over a given range. Show how to define factorial
in terms of product
. Also use product
to compute approximations to π using the formula
b. If your product
procedure generates a recursive process, write one that generates an iterative process. If it generates an iterative process, write one that generates a recursive process.
a. Show that sum
and product
(Exercise 1.31) are both special cases of a still more general notion called accumulate
that combines a collection of terms, using some general accumulation function:
(accumulate combiner null-value term a next b)
accumulate
takes as arguments the same term and range specifications as sum
and product
, together with
a combiner
procedure (of two arguments) that specifies how the current term is to be combined with the accumulation of the preceding terms and a null-value
that specifies what base value to use when the terms
run out. Write accumulate
and show how sum
and product
can both be defined as simple calls to accumulate
.
b. If your accumulate
procedure generates a recursive process, write one that generates an iterative process. If it generates an iterative process, write one that generates a recursive process.
You can obtain an even more general version of accumulate
(Exercise 1.32) by introducing the notion of a filter on the terms to be combined. That is, combine only those terms derived from values in the range that satisfy a specified condition. The resulting filtered-accumulate
abstraction takes the same arguments as accumulate, together with an additional predicate of one argument that specifies the filter. Write filtered-accumulate
as a procedure. Show how to express the following using filtered-accumulate
:
a. the sum of the squares of the prime numbers in the interval a to b (assuming that you have a prime?
predicate already written)
b. the product of all the positive integers less than n that are relatively prime to n (i.e., all positive integers i < n such that GCD(i,n) = 1
).
Suppose we define the procedure
(define (f g) (g 2))
Then we have
(f square)
; 4
(f (lambda (z) (* z (+ z 1))))
; 6
What happens if we (perversely) ask the interpreter to evaluate the combination (f f)
? Explain.
You will get not this error:
application: not a procedure;
expected a procedure that can be applied to arguments
given: 2
arguments...:
g
needs to be a procedure which can take 2
as argument. But you can't put a 2
in f
, because f
needs a procedure.
Show that the golden ratio φ (Section 1.2.2) is a fixed point of the transformation x → 1 + 1/x, and use this fact to compute φ by means of the fixed-point
procedure.
Modify fixed-point
so that it prints the sequence of approximations it generates, using the newline
and display
primitives shown in Exercise 1.22. Then find a solution to xx = 1000 by finding a fixed point of x → log(1000)/ log(x
). (Use Scheme’s primitive log
procedure, which computes natural logarithms.) Compare the number of steps this takes with and without average damping. (Note that you cannot start fixed-point
with a guess of 1, as this would cause division by log(1) = 0.)
a. An infinite continued fraction is an expression of the form
As an example, one can show that the infinite continued fraction expansion with the Ni and the Di all equal to 1 produces 1/φ, where φ is the golden ratio (described in Section 1.2.2). One way to approximate an infinite continued fraction is to truncate the expansion after a given number of terms. Such a truncation--a so-called k-term finite continued fraction—-has the form
Suppose that n
and d
are procedures of one argument (the term index i) that return the Ni and Di of the terms of the continued fraction. Define a procedure cont-frac
such that evaluating (cont-frac n d k)
computes the value of the k-term finite continued fraction. Check your procedure by approximating 1/φ using
(cont-frac (lambda (i) 1.0)
(lambda (i) 1.0)
k)
for successive values of k
. How large must you make k
in order to get an approximation that is accurate to 4 decimal places?
b. If your cont-frac
procedure generates are cursive process, write one that generates an iterative process. If it generates an iterative process, write one that generates a recursive process.
In 1737, the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler published a memoir De Fractionibus Continuis, which included a continued fraction expansion for e − 2, where e is the base of the natural logarithms. In this fraction, the Ni are all 1, and the Di are successively 1, 2, 1, 1, 4, 1, 1, 6, 1, 1, 8, . . .. Write a program that uses your cont-frac
procedure from Exercise 1.37 to approximate e, based on Euler’s expansion.
A continued fraction representation of the tangent function was published in 1770 by the German mathematician J.H. Lambert:
where x is in radians. Define a procedure (tan-cf x k)
that computes an approximation to the tangent function based on Lambert’s formula. k
specifies the number of terms to compute, as in Exercise 1.37.
Define a procedure cubic
that can be used together with the newtons-method
procedure in expressions of the form
(newtons-method (cubic a b c) 1)
to approximate zeros of the cubic x3 + ax2 + bx + c.
Define a procedure double
that takes a procedure of one argument as argument and returns a procedure that applies the original procedure twice. For example, if inc
is a procedure that adds 1 to its argument, then (double inc)
should be a procedure that adds 2. What value is returned by
(((double (double double)) inc) 5)
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)
; 49
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 2n-th 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)
; 625
Hint: You may find it convenient to use compose
from Exercise 1.42.
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 obtain 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.
We saw in Section 1.3.3 that attempting to compute square roots by naively finding a fixed point of y → x / y does not converge, and that this can be fixed by average damping. The same method works for finding cube roots as fixed points of the average-damped y → x / y2. Unfortunately, the process does not work for fourth roots—a single average damp is not enough to make a fixed-point search for y → x / y3 converge. On the other hand, if we average damp twice (i.e., use the average damp of the average damp of y → x / y3) the fixed-point search does converge. Do some experiments to determine how many average damps are required to compute nth roots as a fixed-point search based upon repeated average damping of y → x / yn-1. Use this to implement a simple procedure for computing nth roots using fixed-point
, average-damp
, and the repeated
procedure of Exercise 1.43. Assume that any arithmetic operations you need are available as primitives.
Several of the numerical methods described in this chapter are instances of an extremely general computational strategy known as iterative improvement. Iterative improvement says that, to compute something, we start with an initial guess for the answer, test if the guess is good enough, and otherwise improve the guess and continue the process using the improved guess as the new guess. Write a procedure iterative-improve
that takes two procedures as arguments: a method for telling whether a guess is good enough and a method for improving a guess. iterative-improve
should return as its value a procedure that takes a guess as argument and keeps improving the guess until it is good enough. Rewrite the sqrt
procedure of Section 1.1.7 and the fixed-point
procedure of Section 1.3.3 in terms of iterative-improve
.