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Lowest value path in a binary search tree

Was asked this in an interview recently and got stumped.
Given a binary tree where the nodes contain integer values, find the path (going all the way down to the leaves) that sum up to the lowest value.
So starting at root and traversing all the way down in a depth first fashion until you get to a leaf and adding up the node values along the way. Repeat for every possible path to the leaves.
I was just overwhelmed by the amount of possibilities there could be. But i tried doing a dfs, adding up values along the way, until i got to a leaf. Stored the path and the sum in a hashmap. But then I couldn't figure out how to reset the current sum and go down a different path to a different leaf the second time around.

It could be solved along these lines: Imagine that we define the function lowestValuePath(path, currentValue, bst) which takes a path as a string representation ("lrlrr" would be equivalent to having gone left, right, left, right, right), a value which is the currently accumulated sum of node values along this path, and bst which is the tree to traverse.
Our starting case would be lowestValuePath("", 0, rootNode), and termination would occur on a leaf, returning the path traversed and the value accumulated along this path.
Java-ish pseudo code could be:
TraverseResult {
String path;
int value;
}
TraverseResult lowestValuePath(path, currentValue, bst) {
val newValue = currentValue + bst.getNodeValue();
if bst.isLeaf():
return new TraverseResult(path, newValue);
else
val rightPath = lowestValuePath(path + "r", newValue, bst.getRightNode());
val leftPath = lowestValuePath(path + "l", newValue, bst.getLeftNode());
return leftPath < rightPath ? leftPath : rightPath
}
Some special case handling for the empty tree might be necessary..

If it is a "Binary Search Tree", then for every node T:
left(T) <= T <= right(T)
So actually just turn left all the time and you will get to the lowest value.

Print random element from binary tree in O(logn)

Given a binary tree with TreeNode like:
class TreeNode {
int data;
TreeNode left;
TreeNode right;
int size;
}
Where size is the number of nodes in the (left subtree + right subtree + 1).
Print a random element from the tree in O(logn) running time.
Note: This post is different from this one, as it is clearly mentioned that we have a size associated with each node in this problem.
PS: Wrote this post inspired from this.

There is an easy approach which gives O(n) complexity.
Generate a random number in the range of 1 to root.size
Do a BFS or DFS traversal
Stop iterating at random numbered element and print it.
For improving the complexity, we need to create an ordering of our own where we branch at each iteration instead of going sequentially as in BFS and DFS. We can use the size property of each node to decide whether to traverse through the left sub-tree or right sub-tree. Following is the approach:
Generate a random number in the range of 1 to root.size (Say r)
Start traversing from the root node and decide whether to go to left sub-tree, right-subtree or print root:
if r <= root.left.size, traverse through the left sub-tree
if r == root.left.size + 1, print the root (we have found the random node to print)
if r > root.left.size + 1, traverse through the right sub-tree
Essentially, we have defined an order where current node is ordered at (size of left subtree of current) + 1.
Since we eliminate traversing through left or right sub-tree at each iteration, its running time is O(logn).
The pseudo-code would look something like this:
traverse(root, random)
if r == root.left.size + 1
print root
else if r > root.left.size + 1
traverse(root.right, random - root.left.size - 1)
else
traverse(root.left, random)
Following is an implementation in java:
public static void printRandom(TreeNode n, int randomNum) {
int leftSize = n.left == null ? 0 : n.left.size;
if (randomNum == leftSize + 1)
System.out.println(n.data);
else if (randomNum > leftSize + 1)
printRandom(n.right, randomNum - (leftSize + 1));
else
printRandom(n.left, randomNum);
}

Use size!
Pick a random number q between 0 and n.
Start from the root. If left->size == q return current node value. If the left->size < q the go right else you go left. If you go right subtract q -= left->size + 1. Repeat until you output a node.
This give you o(height of tree). If the tree is balanced you get O(LogN).
If the tree is not balanced but you still want to keep O(logN) you can do the same thing but cap the maximum number of iterations. Note that in this case not all nodes have the same probability of being returned.

Yes, use size!
As Sorin said, pick a random number i between 0 and n - 1 (not n)
Then perform the following instruction:
Treenode rand_node = select(root, i);
Where select could be as follows:
TreeNode select_rec(TreeNode r, int i) noexcept
{
if (i == r.left.size)
return r;
if (i < r.left.size)
return select_rec(r.left, i);
return select_rec(r.right, i - r.left.size - 1);
}
Now a very important trick: the null node must be a sentinel node with size set to 0, what has sense because the empty tree has zero nodes. You can avoid the use of sentinel, but then the select() operation is lightly more complex.
If the trees is balanced, then select() is O(log n)

What is the big oh for comparing two binary trees?

If one binary tree has x nodes and the other has y nodes where x is bigger than y. I was thinking O(n2) because searching for each node is O(n).
And how about inserting then comparing the trees?

Assuming your binary trees are sorted, this is an O(n) operation (where n is the sum of the nodes in both trees, not the product).
You can simply run two "indexes" side by side through the trees stopping when an element is different. If you get to the end of both and no differences were found, then the trees were identical, something like the following pseudo-code:
def areEqual (tree1, tree2):
pos1 = first (tree1)
pos2 = first (tree2)
while pos1 != END and pos2 != END:
if tree1[pos1] != tree2[pos2]:
return false
pos1 = next (tree1, pos1)
pos2 = next (tree2, pos2)
if pos1 != END or pos2 != END:
return false
return true
If they're not sorted, and you have no other information that may allow you to optimise the function, and cannot use extra data structures, it will be O(n2), since you'll have to find an arbitrary equal node in the second tree for every single node in the first (as well as mark it somehow to indicate you've used it).
Keep in mind there are usually ways to trade space for time if the former is more important (and it often is).
For example, even with totally unordered trees, you can reduce the complexity considerably by using hashing for example:
def areEqual (tree1, tree2):
hash = []
# Add all items from first tree.
for item in tree1.allItems():
if not exists hash[item]
hash[item] = 0
hash[item] += 1
# Subtract all items from second tree.
for item in tree2.allItems():
if not exists hash[item]
hash[item] = 0
hash[item] -= 1
if hash[item] == 0:
delete hash[item]
if hash.size != 0:
return false
return true
Since hashing tends to amortise toward O(1), the problem as a whole can be considered O(n).

Non recursive floor method for Binary search tree

I have been trying to get this to work but while it works for majority of the input sometimes it gives the wrong output. I have spent some time debugging the code and it seems the problem is when i get a Node that is smaller than the root but bigger than the left node under the root.
How can I traverse the right sub-tree and still return the right key if no node in the right sub-tree is the floor node for that key?

Recall that if you do anything recursively, it can be transformed* into iteration.
Let's consider taking the floor of a well-formed BST, which should simply be the smallest element which is less than or equal to your key in the tree. All we have to do is traverse the tree to get it.
Let's implement it recursively so we can tease out a few important corollaries between iteration and recursion.
// Assuming non-null root node with method declaration
private Node floor(Node root, Key key, Node lowestNode) {
if(key.compareTo(root.getKey()) <= 0) {
if(root.getLeft() != null) {
return floor(root.getLeft(), key, lowestNode);
} else {
return root.compareTo(lowestNode) < 0 ? root : lowestNode;
}
} else {
if(root.getRight() != null) {
lowestRightNode.add(root);
return floor(root.getRight(), key, lowestNode);
} else {
return lowestNode;
}
}
Let's walk through the conditions for success.
If we compare a node to be less than or equal to our key value:
If we have a left child, there's something smaller. Traverse down the left half of the tree.
Otherwise, we're at the floor - which means we're at the node whose value is less than or equal to our key. Return it.
Otherwise (our node has a value greater than our key):
If we have a right child, there's a chance that our work isn't done yet (something's smaller). We'd like to keep it around since we could step off of the tree, so let's store it, then traverse down the right half of the tree.
Otherwise, we've fallen off of the tree. Return the smallest element we've kept track of.
An example may look something like this:
9
/ \
3 14
/ \
1 2
With a key of 12:
Compare with 9. We're larger. Store 9 in our lowest node variable, recurse right.
Compare with 14. We're smaller, but we don't have a left child. We compare the value 14 to 9 and 9 is smaller, so we return the node with 9.
If we want to convert this into iteration, then think about your starting point, your conditional check, and your incrementation steps.
Starting point: A non-null node
Conditional check:
key.compareTo(root.getKey()) <= 0
root.getLeft() != null
continue
root.compareTo(lowestRightNode) < 0 ? root : lowestRightNode
terminal
else
root.getRight() != null
store temp value and continue
return lowestRightNode
terminal
Pay close attention to your continuation conditions, and what other work you'd have to do to keep track of the lowest node you've seen so far (only for the right-hand side, that is).
*: Some recursive operations are more painful to convert than others, of course.

Java: LinkedList reversal in chunks

If you are provided the head of a linked list, and are asked to reverse every k sequence of nodes, how might this be done in Java? e.g., a->b->c->d->e->f->g->h with k = 3 would be c->b->a->f->e->d->h->g->f
Any general help or even pseudocode would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

If k is expected to be reasonably small, I would just go for the simplest thing: ignore the fact that it's a linked list at all, and treat each subsequence as just an array-type thing of things to be reversed.
So, if your linked list's node class is a Node<T>, create a Node<?>[] of size k. For each segment, load k Nodes into the array list, then just reverse their elements with a simple for loop. In pseudocode:
// reverse the elements within the k nodes
for i from 0 to k/2:
nodeI = segment[i]
nodeE = segment[segment.length-i-1]
tmp = nodeI.elem
nodeI.elem = nodeE.elem
nodeE.elem = tmp
Pros: very simple, O(N) performance, takes advantage of an easily recognizable reversing algorithm.
Cons: requires a k-sized array (just once, since you can reuse it per segment)
Also note that this means that each Node doesn't move in the list, only the objects the Node holds. This means that each Node will end up holding a different item than it held before. This could be fine or not, depending on your needs.

This is pretty high-level, but I think it'll give some guidance.
I'd have a helper method like void swap3(Node first, Node last) that take three elements at an arbitrary position of the list and reverses them. This shouldn't be hard, and could could be done recursively (swap the outer elements, recurse on the inner elements until the size of the list is 0 or 1). Now that I think of it, you could generalize this into swapK() easily if you're using recursion.
Once that is done, then you can just walk along your linked list and call swapK() every k nodes. If the size of the list isn't divisble by k, you could either just not swap that last bit, or reverse the last length%k nodes using your swapping technique.

TIME O(n); SPACE O(1)
A usual requirement of list reversal is that you do it in O(n) time and O(1) space. This eliminates recursion or stack or temporary array (what if K==n?), etc.
Hence the challenge here is to modify an in-place reversal algorithm to account for the K factor. Instead of K I use dist for distance.
Here is a simple in-place reversal algorithm: Use three pointers to walk the list in place: b to point to the head of the new list; c to point to the moving head of the unprocessed list; a to facilitate swapping between b and c.
A->B->C->D->E->F->G->H->I->J->L //original
A<-B<-C<-D E->F->G->H->I->J->L //during processing
^ ^
| |
b c
`a` is the variable that allow us to move `b` and `c` without losing either of
the lists.
Node simpleReverse(Node n){//n is head
if(null == n || null == n.next)
return n;
Node a=n, b=a.next, c=b.next;
a.next=null; b.next=a;
while(null != c){
a=c;
c=c.next;
a.next=b;
b=a;
}
return b;
}
To convert the simpleReverse algorithm to a chunkReverse algorithm, do following:
1] After reversing the first chunk, set head to b; head is the permanent head of the resulting list.
2] for all the other chunks, set tail.next to b; recall that b is the head of the chunk just processed.
some other details:
3] If the list has one or fewer nodes or the dist is 1 or less, then return the list without processing.
4] use a counter cnt to track when dist consecutive nodes have been reversed.
5] use variable tail to track the tail of the chunk just processed and tmp to track the tail of the chunk being processed.
6] notice that before a chunk is processed, it's head, which is bound to become its tail, is the first node you encounter: so, set it to tmp, which is a temporary tail.
public Node reverse(Node n, int dist) {
if(dist<=1 || null == n || null == n.right)
return n;
Node tail=n, head=null, tmp=null;
while(true) {
Node a=n, b=a.right; n=b.right;
a.right=null; b.right=a;
int cnt=2;
while(null != n && cnt < dist) {
a=n; n=n.right; a.right=b; b=a;
cnt++;
}
if(null == head) head = b;
else {
tail.right=b;tail=tmp;
}
tmp=n;
if(null == n) return head;
if(null == n.right) {
tail.right=n;
return head;
}
}//true
}

E.g. by Common Lisp
(defun rev-k (k sq)
(if (<= (length sq) k)
(reverse sq)
(concatenate 'list (reverse (subseq sq 0 k)) (rev-k k (subseq sq k)))))
other way
E.g. by F# use Stack
open System.Collections.Generic
let rev_k k (list:'T list) =
seq {
let stack = new Stack<'T>()
for x in list do
stack.Push(x)
if stack.Count = k then
while stack.Count > 0 do
yield stack.Pop()
while stack.Count > 0 do
yield stack.Pop()
}
|> Seq.toList

Use a stack and recursively remove k items from the list, push them to the stack then pop them and add them in place. Not sure if it's the best solution, but stacks offer a proper way of inverting things. Notice that this also works if instead of a list you had a queue.
Simply dequeue k items, push them to the stack, pop them from the stack and enqueue them :)

This implementation uses ListIterator class:
LinkedList<T> list;
//Inside the method after the method's parameters check
ListIterator<T> it = (ListIterator<T>) list.iterator();
ListIterator<T> reverseIt = (ListIterator<T>) list.listIterator(k);
for(int i = 0; i< (int) k/2; i++ )
{
T element = it.next();
it.set(reverseIt.previous());
reverseIt.set(element);
}