[tlrobinson]

The first and third examples are both creating closures. It doesn't matter if they're named or not. Any time you see the "function" keyword within another function, that's a closure.

Check out the performance of these three styles. #1 and #3 are almost identical, #2 is significantly faster: http://jsperf.com/closures-perf

[panthomakos]

You make a good point and thanks for the performance link. I should have been more clear. The first and third examples are only comprable in the way they create closures - which is equivalent, but they are meant to demonstrate different things. The first demonstrates nested callbacks while the last example demonstrates named functions that are organized by closures.