Multiway Trees of Maximum and Minimum Probability under the Random Permutation Model

Abstract

Multiway trees, also known as m–ary search trees, are data structures generalising binary search trees. A common probability model for analysing the behaviour of these structures is the random permutation model. The probability mass function Q on the set of m–ary search trees under the random permutation model is the distribution induced by sequentially inserting the records of a uniformly random permutation into an initially empty m–ary search tree. We study some basic properties of the functional Q, which serves as a measure of the ‘shape’ of the tree. In particular, we determine exact and asymptotic expressions for the maximum and minimum values of Q and identify and count the trees achieving those values.