We introduced compound procedures in section @ref{1-1-4} as a mechanism for abstracting patterns of numerical operations so as to make them independent of the particular numbers involved. With higher-order procedures, such as the integral procedure of section @ref{1-3-1}, we began to see a more powerful kind of abstraction: procedures used to express general methods of computation, independent of the particular functions involved. In this section we discuss two more elaborate examples — general methods for finding zeros and fixed points of functions — and show how these methods can be expressed directly as procedures. +
We introduced compound procedures in section 1.1.4 as a mechanism for abstracting patterns of numerical operations so as to make them independent of the particular numbers involved. With higher-order procedures, such as the integral procedure of section 1.3.1, we began to see a more powerful kind of abstraction: procedures used to express general methods of computation, independent of the particular functions involved. In this section we discuss two more elaborate examples — general methods for finding zeros and fixed points of functions — and show how these methods can be expressed directly as procedures.