Effective Haskell - inaccurate description of filter example (page 61)

@RebeccaSkinner

On p.61 in Chapter 2, the following is described as finding “the sum of the first ten odd numbers”:

λ (foldr (+) 0 . filter odd) [0..10]
25

In fact, this code sums the odd numbers between 0 and 10 – that is, the first five odd numbers. For the sum of the first ten odd numbers, you’d probably want something like

λ (foldr (+) 0 . map (\x -> 2 * x + 1)) [0..9]
100

You are correct, this is wrongly stated as being the first ten odd numbers rather than the odd numbers from 0 to 10.

It’s actually not a bad example of the differing use cases for map and filter: if the problem is to “sum the odd numbers between m and n,” then filter is perfect; if the problem is to “sum the first n odd numbers,” map is more appropriate.

I’ve only made it to chapter 3 so far, but I’m really enjoying the book!

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