SICP Exercise 1.16

Exercise 1.16.  Design a procedure that evolves an iterative exponentiation process that uses successive squaring and uses a logarithmic number of steps, as does fast-expt. (Hint: Using the observation that (bn/2)2 = (b2)n/2, keep, along with the exponent n and the base b, an additional state variable a, and define the state transformation in such a way that the product a bn is unchanged from state to state. At the beginning of the process a is taken to be 1, and the answer is given by the value of a at the end of the process. In general, the technique of defining an invariant quantity that remains unchanged from state to state is a powerful way to think about the design of iterative algorithms.)

 SOLUTION

The code is here.

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