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Deleting the root of a heap

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Summary

The average behavior of the familiar algorithm for root deletion is considered, when every heap has the same probability to occur. The analysis centers around the notion of a viable path in the tree representation, i.e. such a path the label which replaces the label of the root may be allowed to travel when the heap is reconstructed. In case the size of the heap is a power of 2 it is shown that both the expected number of comparisons and of interchanges are asymptotically equal to the respective numbers in the worst case.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Clarkson College of Technology, 13676, Potsdam, N.Y., USA

    Ernst E. Doberkat

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  1. Ernst E. Doberkat
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Additional information

Some of this work was done at the Fernuniversität, Hagen, West Germany

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Doberkat, E.E. Deleting the root of a heap. Acta Informatica 17, 245–265 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00264353

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00264353

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