I was practicing the recursion tree method using this link: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs3110/2012sp/lectures/lec20-master/lec20.html .. 1st example was okay but in the second example he calculates the height of the tree as log(base 3/2) n .. Can anyone tell me how he calculated height ? May be a dumb question but i can't understand! :|
Let me try explain it. The recursion formula you have is T(n) = T(n/3) + T(2n/3) + n. It says, you are making a recursion tree that splits into two subtrees of sizes n/3, 2n/3, and costs n at that level.
If you see the height is determined by height of largest subtree (+1). Here the right-subtree, the one with 2n/3 element will drive the height. OK?
If the above sentence is clear to you, lets calculate height. At height 1,we will have n*(2/3) elements, at height 2, we have n*(2/3)^2 elements,... we will keep splitting till we have one element left, thus at height h
n*(2/3)^h <= 1
(take log both side)
log(n) + h*log(2/3) <= 0
(log is an increasing function)
h*log(3/2) >= log(n)
h >= log(n)/log(3/2)
h >= log3/2 (n)
I would suggest reading Master Method for Recursion from Introduction to Algorithms - CLRS.