Probabilistic analysis of disjoint set union algorithms
Abstract
A number of open questions are settled about the expected costs of two disjoint set Union and Find algorithms raised by Knuth and Schonhage. This paper shows that the expected time of the Weighted Quick-Find (QFW) algorithm to perform (n-1) randomly chosen unions is cn+o(n/log n), where c = 2.0847.... Through an observation of Tarjan and Van Leeuwen in [J. Assoc. Comput. Mach., 22 (1975), pp. 215-225] this implies linear time bounds to perform O(n) unions and finds for a class of other union-find algorithms. It is also proved that the expected time of the Unweighted Quick-Find (QF) algorithm is n2/8+O(n(log n)2). The expected costs of QFW and QF are analyzed when fewer than (n-1) unions are performed. Among other results, for QFW it is shown that the expected cost of m = o(n) randomly chosen unions is m(1+o(1)). If m = αn/2, where α≤e-2, this cost is m(1+ε(α)+o(1)), where ε(α)→0 as α→0 and ε(e-2)≤.026. For QF, the expected cost of n/2-n2/3(log n)2/3 randomly chosen unions is O(n log n).
Publication Title
SIAM Journal on Computing
Recommended Citation
Bollobas, B., & Simon, I. (1993). Probabilistic analysis of disjoint set union algorithms. SIAM Journal on Computing, 22 (5), 1053-1074. https://doi.org/10.1137/0222064
