Keeping Trees of Losers rather than Trees of Winners I
Advantages of the Tree of Losers:
When using a tree of winners, the records with which the winner has to be compared--so as to find the next winner--are located in different subtrees. Updating such a tree is not very convenient.
When using a tree of losers,
- The value of each leaf (apart from the smallest, the winner) occurs only once in an internal node)
- All the records with which the winner has to be compared lie on a path from the winner leaf to the root.
- As long as each node in the tree has a pointer to its parent, then it is very easy to find the next winner.