I am new to Racket, and I am trying to write a recursive function that takes a number n and returns the sum of the squares of the first n integers. For example, (this-function 3) returns 14 because 14 is 9 + 4 + 1 + 0.
I tried creating two separate functions, one that squares each number and returns a list of the squared numbers, and a second that sums up the list. The function the squares each number is:
(define (squared my-list)
(cond [(empty? my-list) empty]
[(zero? my-list) 0]
[else (cons (expt my-list 2)
(cons (squared (sub1 my-list)) empty))]))
which if I run (squared 3) returns (cons 9 (cons (cons 4 (cons (cons 1 (cons 0 empty)) empty)) empty)).
When I run the second function (the sum function):
(define (sum numbers)
(cond
[(empty? numbers) 0]
[else (+ (first numbers) (sum (rest numbers)))]))
and run (sum (squared 3)) I get an error message because (squared 3) returns an extra "cons" in the list.
How can I fix this?
Your logic in squared is a little bit off. I'll explain the issues clause-by-clause.
[(empty? my-list) empty]
This doesn't make any sense since my-list will never even be a list. In fact, my-list is poorly named. The parameter squared takes is a number, not a list. This clause can be completely removed.
[(zero? my-list) 0]
This is what the actual terminating case should be, but it shouldn't return 0. Remember, squared has to return a list, not a number. This case should return empty.
[else (cons (expt my-list 2)
(cons (squared (sub1 my-list)) empty))]))
Finally, this clause is far too complicated. You have the right idea—to cons the new number onto the rest of the list—but you're cons'ing too many times. Remember, the result of (squared (sub1 my-list)) is itself a list, and the second argument of cons is the rest of the list. You don't need the extra cons—you can just eliminate it completely.
Combining these changes, you get this, which does what you want:
(define (squared my-list)
(if (zero? my-list) empty
(cons (expt my-list 2)
(squared (sub1 my-list)))))
(I also replaced cond with if since cond is no longer necessary.)
That said, this code is not very Racket-y. You had a good idea to break up your function into two functions—in functional programming, functions should really only ever do one thing—but you can break this up further! Specifically, you can leverage Racket's built-in higher-order functions to make this type of thing extremely easy.
You can replace your entire squared function by appropriately combining map and range. For example, the following creates a list of the squares from 0–3.
(map (curryr expt 2) (range 4))
(You need to call (range 4) because the list generated by range goes from 0 to n-1.)
Next, you can easily sum a list using apply. To sum the above list, you'd do something like this:
(apply + (map (curryr expt 2) (range 4)))
That gives you the appropriate result of 14. Obviously, you could encapsulate this in its own function for clarity, but it's a lot clearer what the above code is doing once you learn Racket's functional constructs.
(However, I'm not sure if you're allowed to use those, since your question looks a lot like homework. Just noted for future reference and completeness.)
The most straightforward solution is to use the closed form:
(define (sum-of-squares n)
(* 1/6 n (+ n 1) (+ n n 1)))
Credit: WolframAlpha
one function for providing a list of squares and one function for summing up the list is not necessary.
This will do the trick, and is recursive as required.
(define (my-sq n)
(cond [(zero? n) 0]
[else
(+ (* n n) (my-sq (- n 1)))]))
(my-sq 3) -> 14
Related
I want to create a function in Scheme that takes a list of numbers and displays the number that are less than the average. The answer should be 3 but returns 2. I believe it is not reading "15." What am I doing wrong?
(define x (list 10 60 3 55 15 45 40))
(display "The list: ")
(let ((average (/ (apply + (cdr x)) (car x))))
(length (filter (lambda (x) (< x average)) (cdr x))))
Output:
The list:
(10 60 3 55 15 45 40)
The average:
32.57
Number of values less than average:
2
Sure, let's do this step by step!
First off, let's define a function to get us the average of a list. We'll call this function mean.
(define (mean lst)
(/ (apply + lst) (length lst)))
We get the average by adding all the numbers together and dividing that sum by how many numbers were in the list (that is to say, the length of the list). There are Racket libraries that could provide us with this function, such as the Statistics Functions library from the math-lib package. But we'll do it ourselves since it's simple enough.
Next we have the meat of our algorithm, where we define a function that takes a list, gets the average, and filters out every element less than the average.
(define (less-than-average lst)
(filter (λ (x) (< x (mean lst))) lst))
Looks pretty similar to your code, right? Let's see if it works:
(less-than-average (list 10 60 3 55 15 45 40))
I ran this in DrRacket and it gave me 10 3 15, which is the correct answer. So why did this work, when you (very similar) code does not?
The problem with your code is that the value you are storing in average is incorrect. Viz,
(define x (list 10 60 3 55 15 45 40))
(let ((average (/ (apply + (cdr x)) (car x))))
average)
evaluates to 21.8. As you state, the correct average is 32.57. Your current technique for computing this average is to add up everything in the list after the first element (that's what (apply + (cdr x)) does) then dividing that sum by the first element. This will not give you the mean value of the list. What you ought to be doing is summing up the entire list (via (apply + x)), then dividing that by how many numbers were in the list (ie (length x)).
This answer tries to pay attention to performance. The other answer by Alex has a mean function which walks the list twice: once to add up the elements, and once to compute the length. It then calls this function for every element of the list when filtering it, resulting a function which takes time quadratic in the length of the list being averaged. This is not a problem for small lists.
Here is a mean function which walks the list once.
(define (list-average l)
(let average-loop ([tail l] [sum 0] [len 0])
(if (null? tail)
(/ sum len)
(average-loop (rest tail) (+ sum (first tail)) (+ len 1)))))
This is a little better than one which walks it twice, but the difference is probably not significant (naively it might be twice as fast, in practice probably less).
Here is a filtering function which is careful to call the mean function only once. This is a whole complexity class faster than one which calls it for every element, resulting in a function which takes time proportional to the length of the list, not the length of the list squared.
(define (<=-average l)
(define average (list-average l))
(filter (λ (e) (<= e average)) l))
I will not comment too much, I have just written such a function here and you can study it:
(define less-than-average
(lambda (list return)
((lambda (self) (self self list 0 0 return))
(lambda ( self list acc n col)
(if (null? list)
(col (/ acc n) list)
(let ((a (car list)))
(self self
(cdr list)
(+ acc a)
(+ n 1)
(lambda (average l*) ; when the average is known,
(if (< a average)
(col average (cons a l*))
(col average l* ))))))))))
1 ]=> (less-than-average (list 10 60 3 55 15 45 40)
(lambda (avg l*)
(newline)
(display avg)
(newline)
(display l*)
(newline)) )
228/7
(10 3 15)
Back again with another Racket question. New to higher order functions in general, so give me some leeway.
Currently trying to find the alternating sum using the foldr/foldl functions and not recursion.
e.g. (altsum '(1 3 5 7)) should equal 1 - 3 + 5 - 7, which totals to -4.
I've thought about a few possible ways to tackle this problem:
Get the numbers to add in one list and the numbers to subtract in another list and fold them together.
Somehow use the list length to determine whether to subtract or add.
Maybe generate some sort of '(1 -1 1 -1) mask, multiply respectively, then fold add everything.
However, I have no clue where to start with foldl/foldr when every operation is not the same for every item in the list, so I'm having trouble implementing any of my ideas. Additionally, whenever I try to add more than 2 variables in my foldl's anonymous class, I have no idea what variables afterward refer to what variables in the anonymous class either.
Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated.
We can leverage two higher-order procedures here: foldr for processing the list and build-list for generating a list of alternating operations to perform. Notice that foldr can accept more than one input list, in this case we take a list of numbers and a list of operations and iterate over them element-wise, accumulating the result:
(define (altsum lst)
(foldr (lambda (ele op acc) (op acc ele))
0
lst
(build-list (length lst)
(lambda (i) (if (even? i) + -)))))
It works as expected:
(altsum '(1 3 5 7))
=> -4
Your idea is OK. You can use range to make a list of number 0 to length-1 and use the oddness of each to determine + or -:
(define (alt-sum lst)
(foldl (lambda (index e acc)
(define op (if (even? index) + -))
(op acc e))
0
(range (length lst))
lst))
As an alternative one can use SRFI-1 List Library that has fold that allows different length lists as well as infinite lists and together with circular-list you can have it alterate between + and - for the duration of lst.
(require srfi/1) ; For R6RS you import (srfi :1)
(define (alt-sum lst)
(fold (lambda (op n result)
(op result n))
0
(circular-list + -)
lst))
(alt-sum '(1 3 5 7))
; ==> -4
Example
(trace '((1 2 3) (4 5 6) (7 8 9))) should evaluate to 15 (1+5+9).
Hint: use map to obtain the smaller matrix on which trace can be applied recursively. The Matrix should be squared.
i tried to do it but i cant seem to do it, i tried to get the diagonals first.
define (diagonals m n)
(append
(for/list ([slice (in-range 1 (- (* 2 n) 2))])
(let ((z (if (< slice n) 0 (add1 (- slice n)))))
(for/list ([j (in-range z (add1 (- slice z)))])
(vector-ref (vector-ref m (sub1 (- n j))) (- slice j))))
is there any way to solve that question in a very simple recursive way using map.
i tried to solve it like that.
define (nth n l)
(if (or (> n (length l)) (< n 0))
(if (eq? n 0) (car l)
(nth (- n 1) (cdr l)))))
(+ (nth 3 '(3 4 5)) (nth 2 '(3 4 5)) (nth 3 '(3 4 5)))
but it didnt work too.
Although I don't think answering homework questions is a good idea in general, I can't resist this because it is an example of both what is so beautiful about Lisp programs and what can be so horrible.
What is so beautiful:
the recursive algorithm is almost identical to a mathematical proof by induction and it's just so pretty and clever;
What is so horrible:
matrices are not semantically nested lists and it's just this terrible pun to pretend they are (I'm not sure if my use of first & rest makes it better or worse);
it just conses like mad for no good reason at all;
I'm pretty sure its time complexity is n^2 when it could be n.
Of course Lisp programs do not have to be horrible in this way.
To compute the trace of a matrix:
if the matrix is null, then the trace is 0;
otherwise add the top left element to the trace of the matrix you get by removing the first row and column.
Or:
(define (awful-trace m)
(if (null? m)
;; the trace of the null matrix is 0
0
;; otherwise the trace is the top left element added to ...
(+ (first (first m))
;; the trace of the matrix without its first row and column which
;; we get by mapping rest over the rest of the matrix
(awful-trace (map rest (rest m))))))
And you may be tempted to think the following function is better, but it is just as awful in all the ways described above, while being harder to read for anyone not versed in the auxiliary-tail-recursive-function-with-an-accumulator trick:
(define (awful-trace/not-actually-better m)
(define (awful-loop mm tr)
(if (null? mm)
tr
(awful-loop (map rest (rest mm))
(+ tr (first (first mm))))))
(awful-loop m 0))
Try:
(apply + (map (lambda (index row) (list-ref row index))
'(0 1 2)
'((1 2 3) (4 5 6) (7 8 9))))
Of course, turn that into a function.
To handle matrices larger than 3x3, we need more indices.
Since map stops when it traverses the shortest of the lists, the (0 1 2) list can just be padded out by hand as large as ... your best guess at the the largest matrix you think you would ever represent with nested lists in Scheme before you graduate and never see this stuff again.
So if i have the following, which returns the smallest value out of a set of four numbers:
(define (minimum2 a b c d)
(cond ((and (< a b) (< a c) (< a d)) a)
((and (< b c) (< b d)) b)
((< c d) c)
(else d)))
But, I want to write it so that I compare a to b and find the smallest value between those two, then compare c and d, and find the smallest value between those, and then compare those two smallest values together to find the actual minimum. If what I wrote was tough to understand, think of it like a tournament bracket, where a "plays" b, and the winner plays the other winner between c and d. Thank you in advance for the help!
Here's one way to do it:
(define (min4 a b c d)
(define (min2 x y)
(if (< x y) x y))
(min2 (min2 a b) (min2 c d)))
Another way to do it, if you don't want to use an internal function:
(define (min4 a b c d)
(let ((min-ab (if (< a b) a b))
(min-cd (if (< c d) c d)))
(if (< min-ab min-cd) min-ab min-cd)))
Here are two ways to do this. I think that the first, using reduce, is much more idiomatic, but it's not doing the tournament style structure, though it uses the same number of comparisons. The second, which does a tournament style structure, is actually just a special case of a generalized merge-sort. The reason that the number of comparisons is the same is that in the tournament style comparison,
min(a,b,c,d) = min(min(a,b),min(c,d))
and in the reduce formulation,
min(a,b,c,d) = min(min(min(a,b),c),d)
Both require three calls the lowest level min procedure.
A reduce based approach
This solution uses a fold (more commonly called reduce in Lisp languages, in my experience). Scheme (R5RS) doesn't include reduce or fold, but it's easy to implement:
(define (reduce function initial-value list)
(if (null? list)
initial-value
(reduce function (function initial-value (car list))
(cdr list))))
A left-associative fold is tail recursive and efficient. Given a binary function f, an initial value i, and a list [x1,…,xn], it returns f(f(…f(f(i, x1), x2)…), xn-1), xn).
In this case, the binary function is min2. R5R5 actually already includes an n-ary (well, it actually requires at least one arguments, it's at-least-one-ary) min, which means min would already work as a binary function, but then again, if you wanted to use the built in min, you'd just do (min a b c d) in the first place. So, for the sake of completeness, here's a min2 that accepts exactly two arguments.
(define (min2 a b)
(if (< a b)
a
b))
Then our n-ary min* is simply a reduction of min2 over an initial value and a list. We can use the . notation in the argument list to make this a variadic function that requires at least one argument. This means that we can do (min* x) => x, in addition to the more typical many-argument calls.
(define (min* a . rest)
(reduce min2 a rest))
For example:
(min* 4 2 1 3)
;=> 1
A true tournament-style solution based on merge sort
A proper tournament style min is actually isomorphic to merge sort. Merge sort recursively splits a list in half (this can be done in place using the indices of the original list, as opposed to actually splitting the list into new lists), until lists of length one are produced. Then adjacent lists are merged to produce lists of length two. Then, adjacent lists of length two are merged to produce lists of length four, and so on, until there is just one sorted list. (The numbers here don't always work out perfectly if the length of the input list isn't a power of two, but the same principle applies.) If you write an implementation of merge sort that takes the merge function as a parameter, then you can have it return the one element list that contains the smaller value.
First, we need a function to split a list into left and right sides:
(define (split lst)
(let loop ((left '())
(right lst)
(len (/ (length lst) 2)))
(if (< len 1)
(list (reverse left) right)
(loop (cons (car right) left)
(cdr right)
(- len 1)))))
> (split '(1 2 3 4))
((1 2) (3 4))
> (split '(1))
(() (1))
> (split '(1 2 3))
((1) (2 3))
Merge sort is now pretty easy to implement:
(define (merge-sort list merge)
(if (or (null? list) (null? (cdr list)))
list
(let* ((sides (split list))
(left (car sides))
(right (cadr sides)))
(merge (merge-sort left merge)
(merge-sort right merge)))))
We still need the merge procedure. Rather than the standard one that takes two lists and returns a list of their sorted elements, we need one that can take two lists, where each has at most one element, and at most one of the lists may be empty. If either list is empty, the non-empty list is returned. If both lists are non-empty, then the one with the smaller element is returned. I've called it min-list.
(define (min-list l1 l2)
(cond
((null? l1) l2)
((null? l2) l1)
(else (if (< (car l1) (car l2))
l1
l2))))
In this case, you can define min* to make a call to merge-sort, where the merge procedure is min-list. Merge-sort will return a list containing one element, so we need car to take that element from the list.
(define (min* a . rest)
(car (merge-sort (cons a rest) min-list)))
(min* 7 2 3 6)
;=> 2
(define (checksum-2 ls)
(if (null? ls)
0
(let ([n 0])
(+ (+ n 1))(* n (car ls))(checksum-2 (cdr ls)))))
Ok, I have this code, its suppose to, if I wrote it right, the number (n) should increase by one every time it goes through the list, so n (in reality) should be like 1 2 3 4, but I want n to be multiplied by the car of the list.
Everything loads, but when the answer is returned I get 0.
Thanks!
If you format your code differently, you might have an easier time seeing what is going on:
(define (checksum-2 ls)
(if (null? ls)
0
(let ([n 0])
(+ (+ n 1))
(* n (car ls))
(checksum-2 (cdr ls)))))
Inside the let form, the expressions are evaluated in sequence but you're not using the results for any of them (except the last one). The results of the addition and multiplication are simply discarded.
What you need to do in this case is define a new helper function that uses an accumulator and performs the recursive call. I'm going to guess this is homework or a learning exercise, so I'm not going to give away the complete answer.
UPDATE: As a demonstration of the sort of thing you might need to do, here is a similar function in Scheme to sum the integers from 1 to n:
(define (sum n)
(define (sum-helper n a)
(if (<= n 0)
a
(sum-helper (- n 1) (+ a n))))
(sum-helper n 0))
You should be able to use a similar framework to implement your checksum-2 function.