CS-2001

Data Structures
Fall 2023

Balanced Tree (AVL)

Rizwan Ul Haq
Assistant Professor
FAST-NU
[email protected]
Balanced and Unbalanced BST
1 4
2
2 5
3
1 3
4
4 Is this “balanced”?
5
2 6 6

1 3 5 7 7

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Balanced Tree
• Want a (almost) complete tree after every operation
• Tree is full except possibly in the lower right

• Maintenance of such as tree is expensive

• For example, insert 2 in the tree on the left and then rebuild as a complete
tree
6 5
Insert 2 &
4 9 complete tree 2 8

1 5 8 1 4 6 9

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AVL Trees – Good but not Perfect Balance
• Named after Adelson, Velskii and Landis

• Balance is defined by comparing the height of the two sub-

trees

• Recall:
• An empty tree has height –1
• A tree with a single node has height 0

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AVL Trees
• A binary search tree is said to be AVL balanced if:
• The difference in the heights between the left and right sub-trees
is at most 1, and
• Both sub-trees are themselves AVL trees

• AVL trees with 1, 2, 3 and 4 nodes

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Proposition for AVL
• Proposition: Let T be an AVL tree and x be a node in T and
hleft and hright be the height of left and right sub tree
respectively. Then |hleft - hright| ≤ 1, where |hleft - hright|
denotes the absolute value of hleft - hright.
• Let x be a node in the AVL tree T.
• If hleft > hright, we say that x is left high. In this case, hleft = hright + 1
• If hleft = hright, we say that x is equal high
• If hright > hleft, we say that x is right high. In this case, hright = hleft + 1

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AVL Trees – Example
5 7

2 8 2 8

1 4 7 1 4

3 3 5

An AVL Tree Not an AVL Tree

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AVL Trees – Balance Factor
• An AVL tree has balance factor calculated at every node
• Height of the left subtree minus the height of the right subtree
• For an AVL tree, the balances of the nodes are always -1, 0 or 1.

Height of node =h
Balance Factor (BF) = hleft - hright
Empty height = -1
Tree A (AVL) Tree B (AVL)
Height = 2 BF = 1-0 = 1
1
6 6
4 9 0 4 9
0 0
1 5 -1 -1 1 5 8 -1

-1 -1 -1 -1 FAST-NU, Faisalabad -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 8
AVL Trees – Example
• Here is a larger AVL tree (42 nodes)

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AVL Trees – Example
• The root node is AVL-balanced
• Both sub-trees are of height 4 (i.e., at root BF = 0)

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AVL Trees – Example
• All other nodes (e.g., AF and BL) are AVL balanced
• The sub-trees differ in height by at most one

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AVL Trees – Example
• Consider this AVL tree

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AVL Trees – Example
• Consider inserting 15 into this tree
• In this case, the heights of none of the trees change
• Tree remains balanced

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AVL Trees – Example
• Consider inserting 42 into this tree

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AVL Trees – Example
• Consider inserting 42 into this tree
• Height of two sub-trees rooted at 44 and 38 have increased by one
• The tree is still balanced

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AVL – Tree Example

Tree A (AVL) Tree B (not AVL)

3 balance factor
1-(-1) = 2
6 6
2
4 9 4 9
1 -1
1 5 8 1 5 8
0
7
Height of node = h
Balance factor = hleft-hright
Empty height = -1

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AVL Trees
• To maintain the height balanced property of the AVL tree, it
is necessary to perform a transformation on the tree so that

• In-order traversal of the transformed tree is the same as for

the original tree (i.e., the new tree remains a binary search
tree).
• perform a transformation on the tree

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Transformation (Rotation) of AVL Trees
• Insert operations may cause balance factor to become 2 or –2 for
some node

• Only nodes on the path from insertion point to root node have possibly
change in height

• Follow the path up to the root, find the first node (i.e., deepest) whose
new balance violates the AVL condition

• If a’s new balance factor (the difference hleft – hright) is not [-1,0,1]
• Adjust tree by rotation around the node a

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Balancing AVL Trees – Example
• If a tree is AVL balanced, for an insertion to cause an
imbalance:
• The heights of the sub-trees must differ by 1
• The insertion must increase the height of the deeper sub-tree by 1

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Balancing AVL Trees – Example
• Suppose we insert 23 into our initial tree

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Balancing AVL Trees – Example
• The heights of each of the sub-trees from the insertion point
to the root are increased by one

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Balancing AVL Trees – Example
• Only two of the nodes are unbalanced, i.e., 17 and 36
• Balance factor of 17 is -2
• Balance factor of 36 is 2

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Balancing AVL Trees – Example
• We only have to fix the imbalance at the lowest node

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Fixing Imbalance By Rotation
• Let the node that needs rebalancing be a
• Imbalance during insertion may be handled using four cases

• Outside cases (Single Rotation)

1. Right rotation (case RR)
2. Left rotation (case LL)

• Inside cases (Double Rotation)

3. Right-Left rotation (case RL)
4. Left-Right rotation (case LR)

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Single Rotation in an AVL Tree
• After performing single right rotation the tree became and
AVL again 3
6 2
1 2 6
4 9 1 1

4 8
0 0 1
1 5 8 0 0 0 0
1 5 7 9
0
7
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Right Rotation (RR) in an AVL Tree
• Node b will takes place of node c (it becomes root now)
• Node c will become root of the right sub-tree ( or right child
of new root)
• If there was any right child of node b, it will become left child
of node c now.
c b

b
a c
a
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Right Rotation (RR) – Example
• Consider adding 6

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Right Rotation (RR) – Example
• Height of each of the trees in the path back to the root are
increased by one

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Right Rotation (RR) – Example
• Height of each of the trees in the path back to the root are
increased by one
• Only root node (i.e., 36) violates the balancing factor

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Right Rotation (RR) – Example
• To fix the imbalance, we perform right rotation of root (i.e.,
36)

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When to Perform Right Rotation (RR)
• Let the node that needs rebalancing be a
• Case RR
• Insertion into left subtree of left child of node a
• Left tree is heavy (i.e., hleft- hright > [-1,0,1])

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When to Perform Right Rotation (RR)
• Let the node that needs rebalancing be a
• Case RR
• Insertion into left subtree of left child of node a (RR)
• Left tree is heavy (i.e., hleft > hright )

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Right Rotation (RR) – Examples

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AVL Rotation
Left-Left Rotation (LL)

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Left Rotation (LL) in an AVL Tree
• Node b will take place of node a (it will become new Root).
• Node a will become root of left sub-tree(or left child of new
Root)
• If there was any left child of node b, it will become right child
of node a now
a
b

b
a c
c FAST-NU, Faisalabad 35
Left Rotation (LL) – Example

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When to Perform Left Rotation (LL)
• Let the node that needs rebalancing be a
• Case LL
• Insertion into right subtree of right child of node a (LL)
• Right tree is heavy (i.e., hleft < hright )

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Double Rotations
Left-Right (LR)
Right-Left (RL)

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Single Rotation may be Insufficient
• c becomes the new root. • a becomes the new root.
• a takes ownership of c's left child • c takes ownership of a's right
as its right child, in this case, b. child as its left child, b.
• c takes ownership of a as its left • a takes ownership of c as its
child. right child.

a C a

c Single Left
a Single Right c

b b b
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Left-Right Rotation (LR) or Double Lefts
• perform a right rotation on the right • b becomes the new root.
subtree. • a takes ownership of b's left child as
its right child, in this case null
• b takes ownership of a as its left child

a
a
b
c Single Right b Single Left

b a c
c
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Left-Right Rotation (LR) or "Double Left" – Example
• Consider adding 67
• To fix the imbalance, we perform left-right (LR) rotation of root

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When to Perform Left-Right Rotation (LR)
• Let the node that needs rebalancing be a
• Case LR
• Insertion into left subtree of right child of node a

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When to Perform Left-Right Rotation (LR)
• Let the node that needs rebalancing be a
• Case LR
• Insertion into left subtree of right child of node a (LR)

Right heavy

Left heavy

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Right-Left Rotation (RL) or "Double Right"
• perform a left rotation on the • b becomes the new root.
left subtree. • c takes ownership of b's right
child as its left child, in this case
null.
• b takes ownership of c as its
right child.
c
c b
a Single left Single right
b
b a c
a
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Right-Left Rotation (RL) or "Double Right" –
Example

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When to Perform Right-Left Rotation (RL)
• Let the node that needs rebalancing be a
• Case RL
• Insertion into right subtree of left child of node a

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When to Perform Right-Left Rotation (RL)
• Let the node that needs rebalancing be a
• Case RL
• Insertion into right subtree of left child of node a (RL)

Left heavy

Right heavy

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Summary: How And When To Rotate?
• Let the node that needs rebalancing be a
• Violation during insertion may occur in four
cases
• Outside cases (Single Rotation)
1. Insertion into left subtree of left child of node a
(case RR) Case 1: RR

2. Insertion into right subtree of right child of node

a (case LL)
Case 2: LL

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Summary: How And When To Rotate?
• Let the node that needs rebalancing be a
• Violation during insertion may occur in
four cases
• Inside cases (Double Rotation)
3. Insertion into right subtree of left child of Case 3: RL
a (case RL)

4. Insertion into left subtree of right child of

a (case LR)
Case 4: LR

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Working Example
• Example: 40 30 20 10 5 15 65 33 31

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Exercise-I
• Insert the following data into the empty AVL tree, “Mar, May,
Nov, Aug, Apr, Jan, Dec, July, Feb, June, Oct, Sept”

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