Question

What is the maximum height of an AVL tree with p nodes?

(a) p

(b) log(p)

(c) log(p)/2

(d) ^p⁄2

Origin of the question is AVL Tree topic in chapter Binary Trees of Data Structures & Algorithms I

This question was posed to me in an interview.

Answer 1

Right option is (b) log(p)

Easy explanation - Consider height of tree to be ‘he’, then number of nodes which totals to p can be written in terms of height as N(he)=N(he-1)+1+N(he-2). since N(he) which is p can be written in terms of height as the beside recurrence relation which on solving gives N(he)= O(logp) as worst case height.