Universidad de Chile; Blanco Encalada 2120; Santiago, Chile
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ABSTRACT
Fringe analysis is a technique used to study the average behavior of search trees. In this paper we survey the main results regarding this technique, and we improve a previous asymptotic theorem. At the same time we present new developments and applications of the theory which allow improvements in several bounds on the behavior of search trees. Our examples cover binary search trees, AVL trees, 2-3 trees, and B-trees. Categories and Subject Descriptors: F.2.2 [Analysis of Algorithms and Problem Complexity ]: Nonnumerical Algorithms and Problems -- computations on discrete structures; sorting and searching; E.1 [Data Structures]; trees. Contents 1 Introduction 2 2 The Theory of Fringe Analysis 4 3 Weakly Closed Collections 9 4 Including the Level Information 11 5 Fringe Analysis, Markov Chains, and Urn Processes 13 This work was partially funded by Research Grant FONDECYT 93-0765. e-mail: rbaeza@dcc.uchile.cl 1 Introduction Search trees are one of the most used data structures t...