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Tree Data Structure Data Structures Cheatsheet

Tree Data Structure

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Overview
A tree data structure is a non­linear data structure because it does not store in a
sequential manner. It is a hierarchical structure as elements in a Tree are arranged in
multiple levels.

Introduction
We all are familiar with trees in real life, aren’t we? It’s fascinating to know that with the
observation of leaves and branches of a tree, one came up with a structure to store and
organize data in the real world which now is widely being used in multiple application
libraries and has really changed the world.
Well, coming back to a tree. Observing one, we can conclude that a tree has leaves,
branches, roots and stems. If observed more carefully, each leaf, following it’s stems
and branches,when traced, can take us to its roots.

In real life, this fine observation can be used to structure a basic family history in the
form of the hierarchy where leaves can be considered as children and tracing leaf with
it’s stems and branches can lead to its earliest known roots i.e. parents to grandparents
to earliest known grandparents.
In the above example, considering each person as a leaf node OR each couple with
children as a leaf node, it's easy to trace parents of each leaf by tracing the hierarchy
determining lines (can be related to stems and branches in real life).

Hence the above family tree looks pretty familiar with the following upside down tree,
and that is where this data structure gets its name from.

What is Tree Data Structure?

Let's understand some key points of the Tree data structure.

A tree data structure is defined as a collection of objects or entities known as

nodes that are linked together to represent a hierarchy.
It's a non linear data structure as it does not store data in a sequential manner, but
stores in a hierarchical fashion.
In the Tree data structure, the first node is known as a root node i.e. from which
the tree originates. Each node contains some data and also contains references to
child nodes. A root node can never have a parent node.

Tree Data Structure Terminologies

Tree is a hierarchical data structure that is defined as a collection of nodes. In a tree

nodes represent the values and are connected by edges. Following are the
terminologies and properties of a tree:

Terminology Description Diagram

Root node is a node from which

Root the entire tree originates. It does Node A
not have a parent

An immediate predecessor of any

Parent Node B is parent of E & F
node is its parent node.

All immediate successors of a

node are its children. The
Child Node relationship between the parent F & E are children of B
and child is considered as the
parent­child relationship.

Node which does not have any

child is a leaf. Usually the
boundary nodes of a tree or last
Leaf E, F, J, K, H, I are the leaf nodes.
nodes of the tree are the leaf or
collectively called leaves of the
tree.

Edge is the connection

represented by a line between Connecting line between A&B
Edge one node to another.In a tree with OR A&C OR B&F OR any other
n nodes, there will be ‘n­1’ edges nodes connecting each other.
in a tree.

Siblings in real life means people

with the same parents, similarly
Siblings in the case of trees, nodes with H&I are siblings
common parents are considered
to be siblings.

Path is a number of successive

A ,C, G, K is path from node A to
Path edges from source node to
K
destination node.
Terminology Description Diagram

A, C, G, K form a height. Height

Height of a node represents the
Height of number of edges on the longest
Node path between that node and a
leaf.
of A is no. of edges between A
and K,, which is 3. Similarly the
height of G is 1 as it has just
one edge until the next leaf
node.

Level of a node represents the

generation of a node. If the root
Levels of Level of H, I & J is 3. Level of D,
node is at level 0, then its next
node E, F & G is 2
child node is at level 1, its
grandchild is at level 2, and so on

Degree of a node implies the

Degree of
number of child nodes a node Degree of D is 2 and of C is 3
Node
has.

When you’ve iterated or traversed

to a specific node
Visiting programmatically, accessing
value or checking value of the
current node is called visiting.

Internal A node that has at least one child All the nodes except E, F, J, K,
Node is known as an internal node. H, I are internal.

Traversing is a process of visiting There are three types of

Traversing each node in a specific order in a traversals: inorder, preorder,
tree data structure. postorder traversal.

An ancestor or ancestors to a
node are all the predecessor
Ancestor nodes from root until that node. A, C & G are ancestor to K and J
node I.e. any parent or grandparent and nodes
so on of a specific node are its
ancestors.
 Terminology Description Diagram

Immediate successor of a node is

Descendant K is descendent of G
its descendent.

Descendants of a node represent

subtree. Tree being a recursive Nodes B, E, F represent one
Sub tree
data structure can contain many subtree.
subtrees inside of it.

Properties of Trees in Data Structure

Recursive Data Structure: a recursive method is the one that calls itself. Similarly a
recursive data structure is the one that contains itself. A tree can be viewed as a
recursive data structure, as even though a tree has only one root node, each node acts
as a root node to another sub­tree. For example:

Following is a tree that has ‘A’ as the root node. Similarly if we look at ‘C’ node, that is
another tree in itself. And the tree no 3 i.e. that starts with ‘D’ node is also a tree in itself.
And that is how a tree contains multiple trees in itself, and this proves that it's a
recursive data structure as a recursive data structure contains itself.

Note: Even the leaf nodes are a tree in itself i.e. they can be seen from a perspective
as trees without any child nodes.

Number of edges: If there are ‘n’ nodes in a tree then there would be n − 1 edges.
Each edge is the line­arrow connecting two nodes.

Depth of node x: Depth of a specific node x is defined as the length from root till this x
node. One edge contributes to one unit in the length. Hence depth of a node x can also
be considered as the number of nodes from root node till this x node.

Or depth of a node x can also be considered as the level L at which this node is, and
adding 1 to it i.e. depth = L + 1. It is because the first level starts with 0.

Height of node x: Height of a node represents the number of edges on the longest path
between that node and a leaf.

Implementation of Tree in Data Structure

The above representation depicts what a tree looks like on a memory. According to it,
each node consists of three fields.

Le몭 part of the node consists of the memory address of the le몭 child, the right part of
the node consists of the memory address of the right child and the center part holds the
data for this node.

Relating to the above representation, each node can be programmatically defined as a

class as follows:

Here le몭 will contain the reference to the Node that has value which is just smaller to
the value in the current Node. Similarly right will contain reference to the Node that has
value greater than the current Node.

What we’re discussing here is in reference to a binary tree as a binary tree has two
children (utmost). That means, either a node has 0, 1 or max 2 children. A generic tree
can have more than 2 children as well.

Applications of Trees in Data Structure

Traversing: One of the best examples for traversing is DocumentObjectModel.
With such a structure, it becomes simpler to “traverse” through the tree in order
for the programmers to access related nodes.
It allows access to all siblings of a currently selected node. The tree structure becomes a
route for the html interpreter that can be followed to traverse throughout the HTML
document.
 Search: As a tree is a hierarchical data structure, each node is connected to
another node, hence it allows it to reach a specific data node easily and e몭iciently.
Consider a binary search tree, which is a more refined version of a tree as each
node has at most 2 child nodes (a le몭 node and a right node).
A le몭 node will contain data that is less than the data in the current node and right
node will contain data greater than data than the current node.
Hence a specific data is easy to search in a binary search tree. Even though a binary
search tree allows e몭icient searching, extra e몭ort that is required to create a binary
search tree shall also be considered.
As the time complexity of searching an element in the binary search tree is O(H), where
H is the height of the tree, that not only makes searching e몭icient but also makes
insertion and deletion possible at any node in the tree.
Hence organising data in a tree also becomes feasible with e몭icient insertion and
deletion at any node.

Decision Making: Picture tree as a structure where each node depicts a decision
made by the user. Each node provides us with two choices and as the user
chooses one, it moves down the tree with one step. As we reach a leaf, we reach a
final decision. Hence all the flows in any application can all be picturised in a tree
as each and every flow is defined and there are not infinite flows in an application
(unless they’re circular).
For example the following diagram represents multiple decisions that a user has to
make while selecting a movie. Hence, flows to reach a movie that a user wants to watch
are very limited. From the client’s side or the user’s perspective this may not seem like
the same construct. But from the application’s program/code’s perspective there is
some tree­like data structure that is following a similar construct as below.
Hence a tree data structure can provide us with an algorithm that can allow a user to
explore movie streaming applications in such a way that they can reach a movie that
might be best recommended for them.

But if the application had a feature to automatically show the user a movie that is best
recommended for them to watch, is there a possibility for the program to automatically
find a new movie that the user has never watched and with a maximum probability that
the user will like it? This brings us to our next application.

Machine Learning: Well, for a machine to automatically make a decision for the
user, the machine would require a lot of historical data and data trends about the
user’s manual selection of data such that the machine adapts to the choices of the
user’s past choices.
Assuming we have such data, we give the machine access to a tree data structure,
history data sets, allow it to keep stats or data sets of its own to understand data trends
(in this case user’s choice of movies) and somehow let it come with data for each node.

Assuming that there is a program that runs the algorithm using tree data structure
inorder to reach a conclusion (in this case a movie) based on data sets provided.

Initially the data structure will begin with whatever data is provided to it, but as the
program will iterate through each and every data, it will reach wrong conclusions many
times. But once the program has reached a significant amount of iterations, its
tendency to reach a wrong conclusion will decrease as now the program will also have
statistics of its own (like what category the user watches the most, what kind of movies
the user usually skips or not finishes etc).

Based on these data trends and stats, the tree data structure will allow the program to
flow to the right conclusion or in this case a perfect movie for the user. It's all about the
data in the nodes of the trees, if the program gathers the right data trends and statistics
and if the data is correctly used in the nodes of the tree data structure, if the algorithm
to decide what the next child node should be is appropriate, then the program will flow
to the right conclusion most of the times.

NOTE: Above are just some explanations that will allow you to relate a tree data
structure to real life scenarios and it's just a very high level idea as to how tree data
structure can be applied in machine learning or decision making or organising files
in a machine. It's a very brief and surface level analogy for you to relate to some
real life features with this data structure.

Types Of Trees in Data Structure

General tree: In the general tree, each node has either 0 or n number of nodes. In
this tree, there is no limitation to the number of nodes. It starts with a root node
and the children of the parent node make another general sub tree. Hence
eachnode is a root of another sub­tree i.e. there can be `n number of subtrees in a
general tree. All the subtrees are unordered in a general tree.
Binary Tree: In a binary tree, each node can have at most 2 children (i.e. either 0,
1, 2). There is no restriction as to what data will be in the le몭 child or right child.

Binary Search Tree: A binary search tree just like a binary tree can have at most 2
children. It can have n nodes and also each node can be defined as a data part that
holds the data, le몭 child and the right node.
Le몭 child holds reference to the node that contains data which is immediately
lesser than the data in the current node and similarly the right child contains the
reference to the node that contains data which is just greater than the data in the
 current node.
Every node in the le몭 subtree must contain a value less than the value of the root node,
and the value of each node in the right subtree must be bigger than the value of the root
node. Relating to the above representation, a node can be programmatically defined as:

AVL Tree: It can be considered as a binary tree and also a type of binary search
tree. It satisfies features of both binary tree and binary search tree.
It's a self balancing tree i.e. balancing heights of le몭 subtree and right subtree.
This balancing is measured by something called balancing factor.
A tree is considered as an AVL tree if it satisfies properties of both a binary search
tree and the balancing factor. Di몭erence between the height of the le몭 subtree
and the right subtree is considered as the height of the AVL tree.The value of the
balancing factor must be 0, 1 or ­1 for each node in an AVL tree.

Red Black Tree: It is also a variant of a binary search tree. It's also a self balancing
tree just like an AVL tree, the only di몭erence is in an AVL tree, we do not have an
idea as to how much rotations would be required to balance the tree but in a red
black tree a maximum of two rotations are required to balance the tree. It contains
a bit that represents the red or black color of the node to ensure the balancing of
the tree.
And there are and can be more types of tree data structure, but these are the
common tree data structures that one must know about.

Conclusion
A tree data structure is defined as a collection of objects or entities known as
nodes that are linked together to represent a hierarchy.
A tree is recursive in nature as it is a recursive data structure. It is so because each
tree contains multiple subtrees, as each node in a tree is a root node to another
tree that makes it a subtree.
A tree has multiple applications like:

Traversing: that allows us or a program to traverse through an object

model like DocumentObjectModel.
Searching: in a structure like a binary search tree, it's easier to search
for an element as smaller elements are located in the le몭 subtree and
greater elements are located in the right subtree.
Decision Making: A flow of an application can be represented in a
hierarchical structure that allows us to understand all the decisions that
a user can make.
Machine Learning: Machine learning allows us to make automatic
decision making framework that was made possible with tree data
structure.

There are multiple types of trees but the most common of all is the Binary Search
Tree.

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