In the absolute worst case, a binary tree with N elements would be like a linked list.Hence, there would be N levels, and a search would take N traversals. That’s why it’s O(N) in the worst case.And this is why we need to balance the trees to achieve O(log N) search.
Your function does not have a return for every possible circumstance. You have: What do you return if it is not null, and goes to the final else? Nothing is returned. You can either return getParent… in the else statement. or return null at the end of the function (not in an if or else … Read more
I can see how, when looking up a value in a BST we leave half the tree everytime we compare a node with the value we are looking for. However I fail to see why the time complexity is O(log(n)). So, my question is: If we have a tree of N elements, why the time … Read more
Here is a quick example of a binary insert:
Sure – you simply can’t apply the > operator between objects. What would you expect it to do? You can’t apply any of the other binary operators either – +, -, / etc (with the exception of string concatenation). Ideally, you should make your TreeNode generic, and either have a Comparator<T> which is able to compare any two instances, or make T extend Comparable<T>. Either way, … Read more
Binary tree: Tree where each node has up to two leaves Binary search tree: Used for searching. A binary tree where the left child contains only nodes with values less than the parent node, and where the right child only contains nodes with values greater than or equal to the parent.