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In Pursuit of the Dynamic Optimality Conjecture

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Space-Efficient Data Structures, Streams, and Algorithms

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8066))

Abstract

In 1985, Sleator and Tarjan introduced the splay tree, a self-adjusting binary search tree algorithm. Splay trees were conjectured to perform within a constant factor as any offline rotation-based search tree algorithm on every sufficiently long sequence—any binary search tree algorithm that has this property is said to be dynamically optimal. However, currently neither splay trees nor any other tree algorithm is known to be dynamically optimal. Here we survey the progress that has been made in the almost thirty years since the conjecture was first formulated, and present a binary search tree algorithm that is dynamically optimal if any binary search tree algorithm is dynamically optimal.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Brooklyn, New York, USA

    John Iacono

Authors
  1. John Iacono
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Andrej Brodnik

  2. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Alejandro López-Ortiz

  3. The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India

    Venkatesh Raman

  4. Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay

    Alfredo Viola

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Iacono, J. (2013). In Pursuit of the Dynamic Optimality Conjecture. In: Brodnik, A., López-Ortiz, A., Raman, V., Viola, A. (eds) Space-Efficient Data Structures, Streams, and Algorithms. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8066. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40273-9_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40273-9_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-40272-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-40273-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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