One of the exercises in the first (or was that the second?) chapter is speeding up Fibonacci's iterative algorithm by viewing the state transition equations tha

One of the exercises in the first (or was that the second?) chapter is speeding up Fibonacci's iterative algorithm by viewing the state transition equations that derives F_n and F_n+1 from F_n-1 and F_n as a pair of linear transformations, therefore a matrix multiplication that can benfit from fast exponentiation (repeatedly squaring). Then in the chapters after that you code a symbolic differentiator and add pattern matching to the language. SICP doesn't try to be accessible, it's explicitely an engineering text book made for engineers. That's even the reason some people have criticized it[1] and wrote another book[2] with the same themes and goals but ditching the excessive math focus. Anyone who can understand SICP's exercises can understand Scheme. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_and_Interpretation_of_the_Computer_Science_Curriculum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_and_Interpretati... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Design_Programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Design_Programs