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Re:If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they int... by poikniok on Monday June 19, 2017 @01:23PM (#14588632)
Can you explain what it means to balance a binary search tree? Are you referring to writing your own implementation of AVL or RB trees?
Re:If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they int... by eli_gottlieb on Monday June 19, 2017 @05:05PM (#14590460)
>Can you explain what it means to balance a binary search tree?

Yes, to minimize the depth by "filling" every branch possible/equalizing the number of nodes in every subtree at a given depth.

>Are you referring to writing your own implementation of AVL or RB trees?

Yes, though the interviewer didn't say "AVL" or "RB". I'm not sure I ever even got a class with those in it, and frankly, I don't care enough to memorize how to implement them just for an interview question.

Again, this wasn't Google. This wasn't a firm that did complicated data-structures stuff all the time. They fully admitted how simple their work is. But they asked about how to balance a binary search tree anyway.