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Data structure to find median

Asked 2012-07-06T11:27:25.563
17

This is an interview question. Design a class, which stores integers and provides two operations:

void insert(int k)
int getMedian()

I guess I can use BST so that insert takes O(logN) and getMedian takes O(logN) (for getMedian I should add the number of of left/right children for each node).

Now I wonder if this is the most efficient solution and there is no better one.

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You could consider a self-balancing tree, too. If the tree is fully balanced, then the root node is your median. Say, the tree is one-level deeper on one end. Then, you just need to know how many nodes are there in the deeper-side to pick the correct median.

answered 2012-07-06T14:28:50.203

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