SICP Exercise 1.3 request for comments

Question

I\'m trying to learn scheme via SICP. Exercise 1.3 reads as follow: Define a procedure that takes three numbers as arguments and returns the sum of the squares of the two la

Answer 1

It's nice to see how other people have solved this problem. This was my solution:

(define (isGreater? x y z)
(if (and (> x z) (> y z))
(+ (square x) (square y))
0))

(define (sumLarger x y z)
(if (= (isGreater? x y z) 0)   
(sumLarger y z x)
(isGreater? x y z)))

I solved it by iteration, but I like ashitaka's and the (+ (square (max x y)) (square (max (min x y) z))) solutions better, since in my version, if z is the smallest number, isGreater? is called twice, creating an unnecessarily slow and circuitous procedure.