Question

I am looking for an algorithm to split a tree with N nodes (where the maximum degree of each node is 3) by removing one edge from it, so that the two trees that come as the result have as close as possible to N/2. How do I find the edge that is “the most centered”?

The tree comes as an input from a previous stage of the algorithm and is input as a graph – so it’s not balanced nor is it clear which node is the root.

My idea is to find the longest path in the tree and then select the edge in the middle of the longest path. Does it work?

Optimally, I am looking for a solution that can ensure that neither of the trees has more than 2N / 3 nodes.

Thanks for your answers.

Answer 1

I don’t believe that your initial algorithm works for the reason I mentioned in the comments. However, I think that you can solve this in O(n) time and space using a modified DFS.

Begin by walking the graph to count how many total nodes there are; call this n. Now, choose an arbitrary node and root the tree at it. We will now recursively explore the tree starting from the root and will compute for each subtree how many nodes are in each subtree. This can be done using a simple recursion:

• If the current node is null, return 0.
• Otherwise:
  • For each child, compute the number of nodes in the subtree rooted at that child.
  • Return 1 + the total number of nodes in all child subtrees

At this point, we know for each edge what split we will get by removing that edge, since if the subtree below that edge has k nodes in it, the spilt will be (k, n – k). You can thus find the best cut to make by iterating across all nodes and looking for the one that balances (k, n – k) most evenly.

Counting the nodes takes O(n) time, and running the recursion visits each node and edge at most O(1) times, so that takes O(n) time as well. Finding the best cut takes an additional O(n) time, for a net runtime of O(n). Since we need to store the subtree node counts, we need O(n) memory as well.

Hope this helps!