Further comments on the subtree isomorphism for ordered trees

1991 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 255-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Grossi
Author(s):  
Mareike Fischer

AbstractTree balance plays an important role in different research areas like theoretical computer science and mathematical phylogenetics. For example, it has long been known that under the Yule model, a pure birth process, imbalanced trees are more likely than balanced ones. Also, concerning ordered search trees, more balanced ones allow for more efficient data structuring than imbalanced ones. Therefore, different methods to measure the balance of trees were introduced. The Sackin index is one of the most frequently used measures for this purpose. In many contexts, statements about the minimal and maximal values of this index have been discussed, but formal proofs have only been provided for some of them, and only in the context of ordered binary (search) trees, not for general rooted trees. Moreover, while the number of trees with maximal Sackin index as well as the number of trees with minimal Sackin index when the number of leaves is a power of 2 are relatively easy to understand, the number of trees with minimal Sackin index for all other numbers of leaves has been completely unknown. In this manuscript, we extend the findings on trees with minimal and maximal Sackin indices from the literature on ordered trees and subsequently use our results to provide formulas to explicitly calculate the numbers of such trees. We also extend previous studies by analyzing the case when the underlying trees need not be binary. Finally, we use our results to contribute both to the phylogenetic as well as the computer scientific literature using the new findings on Sackin minimal and maximal trees to derive formulas to calculate the number of both minimal and maximal phylogenetic trees as well as minimal and maximal ordered trees both in the binary and non-binary settings. All our results have been implemented in the Mathematica package SackinMinimizer, which has been made publicly available.


2008 ◽  
Vol DMTCS Proceedings vol. AJ,... (Proceedings) ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Kuba ◽  
Alois Panholzer

International audience We study two enumeration problems for $\textit{up-down alternating trees}$, i.e., rooted labelled trees $T$, where the labels $ v_1, v_2, v_3, \ldots$ on every path starting at the root of $T$ satisfy $v_1 < v_2 > v_3 < v_4 > \cdots$. First we consider various tree families of interest in combinatorics (such as unordered, ordered, $d$-ary and Motzkin trees) and study the number $T_n$ of different up-down alternating labelled trees of size $n$. We obtain for all tree families considered an implicit characterization of the exponential generating function $T(z)$ leading to asymptotic results of the coefficients $T_n$ for various tree families. Second we consider the particular family of up-down alternating labelled ordered trees and study the influence of such an alternating labelling to the average shape of the trees by analyzing the parameters $\textit{label of the root node}$, $\textit{degree of the root node}$ and $\textit{depth of a random node}$ in a random tree of size $n$. This leads to exact enumeration results and limiting distribution results. Nous étudions deux problèmes de dénombrement d'$\textit{arbres alternés haut-bas}$ : par définition, ce sont des arbres munis d'une racine et tels que, pour tout chemin partant de la racine, les valeurs $v_1,v_2,v_3,\ldots$ associées aux nœuds du chemin satisfont la chaîne d'inégalités $v_1 < v_2 > v_3 < v_4 > \cdots$. D'une part, nous considérons diverses familles d'arbres intéressantes du point de vue de l'analyse combinatoire (comme les arbres de Motzkin, les arbres non ordonnés, ordonnés et $d$-aires) et nous étudions pour chaque famille le nombre total $T_n$ d'arbres alternés haut-bas de taille $n$. Nous obtenons pour toutes les familles d'arbres considérées une caractérisation implicite de la fonction génératrice exponentielle $T(z)$. Cette caractérisation nous renseigne sur le comportement asymptotique des coefficients $T_n$ de plusieurs familles d'arbres. D'autre part, nous examinons le cas particulier de la famille des arbres ordonnés : nous étudions l'influence de l'étiquetage alterné haut-bas sur l'allure générale de ces arbres en analysant trois paramètres dans un arbre aléatoire (valeur de la racine, degré de la racine et profondeur d'un nœud aléatoire). Nous obtenons alors des résultats en terme de distribution limite, mais aussi de dénombrement exact.


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