Question

What is the time complexity for increasing priority of key in a minimum ternary heap of n elements?

(a) O (log n/ log 3)

(b) O (3log n/ log 3)

(c) O (n)

(d) O (1)

This interesting question is from Ternary heap topic in section Heap of Data Structures & Algorithms I

I had been asked this question by my school principal while I was bunking the class.

Answer 1

The correct answer is (b) O (3log n/ log 3)

Explanation: In order to the increasing the priority of key in a minimum ternary heap data structure having n elements, it performs downward swapping. So the time complexity for worst case is found to be O (3log n/ log 3).