History on AVL tree

[(Eric) Yu Chen]

For those people curious where the AVL tree was originally from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVL_tree
I said one thing wrong about the history. That was not from the Bell Lab,
but was from Russia.
The two authors are G.M. Adelson-Velsky and E.M. Landis. (AV and L)
-Eric. (instructor cs240)

[Prabhakar Ragde]

"(Eric) Yu Chen" <y28...@cs.uwaterloo.ca> writes:

> The two authors are G.M. Adelson-Velsky and E.M. Landis. (AV and L)

This being a rare example of a three-letter acronym (TLA) formed from
the names of only two people. --PR

--
Prabhakar Ragde, Professor plragde at uwaterloo dot ca
Cheriton School of Computer Science http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~plragde
Faculty of Mathematics DC 1314, (519)888-4567,x4660
University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario CANADA N2L 3G1

[Brennan Taylor]

"AVL Trees" clearly rolls off the tounge better than "AL Trees".

And there are few datastructures with as cool a name as "Treeps". Gotta love em'.

[Prabhakar Ragde]

Brennan Taylor <b4ta...@student.cs.uwaterloo.ca> writes:

> "AVL Trees" clearly rolls off the tounge better than "AL Trees".

Only because you're used to it.

> And there are few datastructures with as cool a name as
> "Treeps". Gotta love em'.

Treaps not only have a cool name, but are a cool data structure, and
really should be part of the curriculum. (They're an enhancement in
136, and I might use them as an assignment question in 145.)

Munro and Suwanda have a data structure they call a beap, though when
I used it as an assignment question in 136, I called it a greap. --PR

[James Simpson]

In general it is bad practice to link to wikipedia for anything that is
important to get a definition from due to the fact that Wikipedia is often
an inaccurate source of information. Most of the work on wikipedia is
opinion, not fact, and we are in a theoretical computer science course, we
must ask that our information be based on researched/proven fact not the
definition of something on one day (since the definition of AVL Trees will
often be changed to things that are more or less accurate than the day
before [e.g. vanadlism on wikipedia]). Wikipedia is a source of
unverified opinion and heresay for a topic at hand, better bets for the
history of the AVL tree would be the CLRS (CS341 textbook) and the
Sedgewick book, since at least those are researched, and are based on fact
not the random opinions of wikipedos at one time.

Regards,

James Simpson

[Gordon V. Cormack]

No encyclopedia should be used as a primary source.

That said, I'm not convinced that the review process
for Wikipedia is inferior to that for other references.
And Wikipedia articles generally cite primary sources
that you can check out.

For most topics in cs241 and cs240, I've found the
Wikipedia articles to be reasonably accurate and
informative.

[Scott McKee]

I'm going to bite.

Wikipedia, like any other encyclopedia, is useful as a quick reference
(what Eric used it as) or as a jumping board into research on topics.
Your conclusion that "Wikipedia is a source of unverified opinion and
heresay" is itself an unverified opinion based upon heresay. When
compared to Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia has been found to be in
the same realm of accuracy (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4530930.stm and
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html ).

Wikipedia is a powerful tool for conducting research, but like any other
tool it must be used properly and with awareness of its shortcomings.

-Scott McKee