Merge pull request GitbookIO#39 from hasselg/ho_functions

AaronO · AaronO · commit 06f99877048e · 2014-04-12T10:35:57.000-07:00
Corrected grammar and improved clarity of HOF descriptions
diff --git a/functions/higher_order.md b/functions/higher_order.md
@@ -4,9 +4,7 @@ Higher order functions are functions that manipulate other functions.
 For example, a function can take other functions as arguments and/or produce a function as its return value.
 Such *fancy* functional techniques are powerful constructs available to you in JavaScript and other high-level languages like python, lisp, etc.
 
-We will now create two simple functions `add_2` and `double` and higher order
-function called `map(func, list)` which applies the function `func` (the first argument)
-to each of the elements in the array `list` (the second argument).
+We will now create two simple functions, `add_2` and `double`, and a higher order function called `map`. `map` will accept two arguments, `func` and `list` (its declaration will therefore begin `map(func,list)`), and return an array. `func` (the first argument) will be a function that will be applied to each of the elements in the array `list` (the second argument).
 
 ```javascript
 // Define two simple functions
@@ -35,11 +33,9 @@ map(add_2, [5,6,7]) // => [7, 8, 9]
 map(double, [5,6,7]) // => [10, 12, 14]
 ```
 
-The functions in the above example were intentionally simple,
-and serves to illustrate that passing functions as arguments
-to other functions allows for flexibility when building things.
+The functions in the above example are simple. However, when passed as arguments to other functions, they can be composed in unforeseen ways to build more complex functions.
 
-For example, if we notice that we use the invocations `map(add_2, ...)` and `map(double, ...)` very often in our code, we could decide we want to create two special-purpse list processors that have the desired operation baked into them. Using function composition, we could do this as follows:
+For example, if we notice that we use the invocations `map(add_2, ...)` and `map(double, ...)` very often in our code, we could decide we want to create two special-purpse list processing functions that have the desired operation baked into them. Using function composition, we could do this as follows:
 
 ```javascript
 process_add_2 = function(list) {
@@ -76,7 +72,7 @@ process_double([5,6,7]) // => [10, 12, 14]
 
 
 Let's look at another example.
-We'll create a function called `buildMultiplier` that takes a number `x` as input and returns a function that multiplies it's argument by x :
+We'll create a function called `buildMultiplier` that takes a number `x` as input and returns a function that multiplies its argument by `x` :
 
 ```javascript
 var buildMultiplier = function(x) {
