CS 61A Trees, Binary Numbers

Fall 2020 Discussion 5: September 30, 2020 Solutions

1 Trees
7
In computer science, trees are recursive data structures that are widely used in
various settings. The diagram to the right is an example of a tree.
1 19
Notice that the tree branches downward. In computer science, the root of a tree
starts at the top, and the leaves are at the bottom. 3 11 20
Some terminology regarding trees:
2 8 16
• Parent node: A node that has branches. Parent nodes can have multiple
branches. −4 0 6 17
• Child node: A node that has a parent. A child node can only belong to one
parent.

• Root: The top node of the tree. In our example, the node that contains 7 is
the root.

• Label: The value at a node. In our example, all of the integers are values.

• Leaf : A node that has no branches. In our example, the nodes that contain
−4, 0, 6, 17, and 20 are leaves.

• Branch: A subtree of the root. Note that trees have branches, which are
trees themselves: this is why trees are recursive data structures.

• Depth: How far away a node is from the root. In other words, the number
of edges between the root of the tree to the node. In the diagram, the node
containing 19 has depth 1; the node containing 3 has depth 2. Since there are
no edges between the root of the tree and itself, the depth of the root is 0.

• Height: The depth of the lowest leaf. In the diagram, the nodes containing
−4, 0, 6, and 17 are all the “lowest leaves,” and they have depth 4. Thus, the
entire tree has height 4.

In computer science, there are many different types of trees. Some vary in the
number of branches each node has; others vary in the structure of the tree.
 2 Trees, Binary Numbers

Implementation
A tree has both a value for the root node and a sequence of branches, which are
also trees. In our implementation, we represent the branches as a list of trees. Since
a tree is an abstract data type, our choice to use lists is just an implementation
detail.

• The arguments to the constructor tree are the value for the root node and
an optional list of branches. If no branches parameter is provided, the default
value [] is used.

• The selectors for these are label and branches.

Note that branches returns a list of trees and not a tree directly. It’s important to
distinguish between working with a tree and working with a list of trees.

We have also provided a convenience function, is_leaf.

Let’s try to create the tree below.

3 2

4 5 6

# Example tree construction

t = tree(1,
[tree(3,
[tree(4),
tree(5),
tree(6)]),
tree(2)])

Questions
1.1 Write a function that returns the height of a tree. Recall that the height of a tree
is the length of the longest path from the root to a leaf.
def height(t):
"""Return the height of a tree.

>>> t = tree(3, [tree(5, [tree(1)]), tree(2)])

>>> height(t)
2
"""

if is_leaf(t):
return 0
return 1 + max([height(branch) for branch in branches(t)])

Note: This worksheet is a problem bank—most TAs will not cover all the problems in discussion section.
 Trees, Binary Numbers 3

# alternate solution
return 1 + max([-1] + [height(branch) for branch in branches(t)])

Video walkthrough

Note: This worksheet is a problem bank—most TAs will not cover all the problems in discussion section.
 4 Trees, Binary Numbers

1.2 Write a function that takes in a tree and returns the maximum sum of the values
along any path in the tree. Recall that a path is from the tree’s root to any leaf.

def max_path_sum(t):
"""Return the maximum path sum of the tree.

>>> t = tree(1, [tree(5, [tree(1), tree(3)]), tree(10)])

>>> max_path_sum(t)
11
"""

if is_leaf(t):
return label(t)
else:
return label(t) + max([max_path_sum(b) for b in branches(t)])

Note: This worksheet is a problem bank—most TAs will not cover all the problems in discussion section.
 Trees, Binary Numbers 5

1.3 Tutorial: Write a function that takes in a tree and squares every value. It should
return a new tree. You can assume that every item is a number.

def square_tree(t):
"""Return a tree with the square of every element in t
>>> numbers = tree(1,
... [tree(2,
... [tree(3),
... tree(4)]),
... tree(5,
... [tree(6,
... [tree(7)]),
... tree(8)])])
>>> print_tree(square_tree(numbers))
1
4
9
16
25
36
49
64
"""

sq_branches = [square_tree(branch) for branch in branches(t)]

return tree(label(t)**2, sq_branches)

Video walkthrough

Note: This worksheet is a problem bank—most TAs will not cover all the problems in discussion section.
 6 Trees, Binary Numbers

1.4 Tutorial: Write a function that takes in a tree and a value x and returns a list
containing the nodes along the path required to get from the root of the tree to a
node containing x.

If x is not present in the tree, return None. Assume that the entries of the tree are
unique.

For the following tree, find path(t, 5) should return [2, 7, 6, 5]

7 15

3 6

5 11

def find_path(tree, x):

"""
>>> t = tree(2, [tree(7, [tree(3), tree(6, [tree(5), tree(11)])] ), tree(15)])
>>> find_path(t, 5)
[2, 7, 6, 5]
>>> find_path(t, 10) # returns None
"""

if _____________________________:

return _____________________________

_____________________________:

path = _____________________________

if _____________________________:

return _____________________________

def find_path(tree, x):

if label(tree) == x:
return [label(tree)]
for b in branches(tree):
path = find_path(b, x)
if path:
return [label(tree)] + path

Video walkthrough

Note: This worksheet is a problem bank—most TAs will not cover all the problems in discussion section.
 Trees, Binary Numbers 7

2 Binary Numbers
In normal life, we think of numbers as being defined in base 10: i.e. We define
numbers with digits 0 through 9 and represent numbers as such:

• 11 = 1 * 10 + 1 * 1

• 123 = 1 * 100 + 2 * 10 + 3 * 1

• 9805 = 9 * 1000 + 8 * 100 + 9 * 10 + 5 * 1

But in computer science, we oftentimes look at these numbers in base 2, or binary

instead. Then, we see numbers represented in 0s and 1s and breakdown their digits
in terms of powers of two:

• 11 = 1 * 8 + 0 * 4 + 1 * 2 + 1 * 1 = 1011

• 3 = 1 * 2 + 1 * 1 = 11

• 6 = 1 * 4 + 1 * 2 + 0 * 1 = 110

2.1 Fill in the table to convert the following numbers between decimal and binary.
Decimal Binary (unsigned)
5
10
14
37
10
101010
1100101

Decimal Binary (unsigned)

5 101
10 1010
14 1110
37 100101
2 10
42 101010
101 1100101

2.2 Write a function that takes in a tree consisting of ’0’s and ’1’s t and a list of ”binary
numbers” nums and returns a new tree that contains only the numbers in nums that
exist in t. If there are no numbers in nums that exist in t, return None.

Definition: Each binary number is represented as a string. A binary number n

exists in t if there is some path from the root to leaf of t whose values are equal to
n.

For example, if t is as follows:

Note: This worksheet is a problem bank—most TAs will not cover all the problems in discussion section.
8 Trees, Binary Numbers

0 0
1

0 0 0 0
0 1

0 0 0 0 0 0
0 1 0

Then prune binary(t, [’01’, ’110’, ’100’]) should return the following tree.
0 0
1

0 0 0 0
0 1

0 0 0 0
0 0

def prune_binary(t, nums):

if _________________________:
if _____________:
return t
return None
else:
next_valid_nums = __________________________
new_branches = []
for ____________________:
pruned_branch = prune_binary(_____, next_valid_nums)
if pruned_branch is not None:
new_branches = new_branches + [__________]
if not new_branches:
return None
return ______________________________

def prune_binary(t, nums):

if is_leaf(t):
if label(t) in nums:
return t
return None
else:
next_valid_nums = [n[1:] for n in nums if n[0] == label(t)]
new_branches = []
for b in branches(t):
pruned_branch = prune_binary(b, next_valid_nums)
if pruned_branch is not None:
new_branches = new_branches + [pruned_branch]
if not new_branches:
return None
return tree(label(t), new_branches)

Note: This worksheet is a problem bank—most TAs will not cover all the problems in discussion section.