CMU-CS-22-120
Computer Science Department
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University



CMU-CS-22-120

Learning Augmented Binary Search Trees

Tian Luo

M.S. Thesis

July 2022

CMU-CS-22-120.pdf


Keywords: Data Structure and Algorithms, Learning Augmented Data Structures, Learning Augmented Algorithms, Search Tree, Binary Search Tree, Treap, Zipfian Distribution

A treap is a classic randomized binary search tree data structure that is easy to implement and supports O(log n) expected time access. However, classic treaps do not take advantage of the input distribution or patterns in the input. Given recent advances in algorithms with predictions, we propose pairing treaps with machine advice to form a learning-augmented treap. We are the first to propose a learning-augmented data structure that supports binary search tree operations such as range-query and successor functionalities. With the assumption that we have access to advice from a frequency estimation oracle, we assign learned priorities to the nodes to better improve the treap's structure. We theoretically analyze the learning-augmented treap's performance under various input distributions and show that under those circumstances, our learning-augmented treap has stronger guarantees than classic treaps and other classic tree-based data structures. Further, we experimentally evaluate our learned treap on synthetic datasets and demonstrate a performance advantage over other search tree data structures. We also present experiments on real world datasets with known frequency estimation oracles and show improvements as well.

30 pages

Thesis Committee:
David Woodruff (Chair)
Daniel Sleator

Srinivasan Seshan, Head, Computer Science Department
Martial Hebert, Dean, School of Computer Science


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