[shoki]

Given the guys programming in Javascript and not using arbitrary precision arithmetic, he's always using 64 bits and representing his numbers as floating point, so I don't think you are reasoning correctly about the asympototic complexity here. I mean, if you really want to argue this, then to quote Leibniz: "Calculemus!"

The javascript solution presented does everything in O(n) arithmetic operations, and the SICP way does it in O(ln(n)) arithmetic operations (actually, there are a lot of ways to do it in O(ln(n)) operations).

[jerf]

If we're going to stick to a fixed precision numbers, and we're just out to score maximum internet points, you can do it in O(1) by just computing out a table in advance, and for not much storage space since the series grows exponentially.

I mean, if we're going to screw around with the Os let's do it properly.