Abstract
Skip lists, introduced by W. Pugh, provide an alternative to search trees. The exact value of the expected search cost is derived (in terms of previously studied functions), as well as an asymptotic expression for it. The latter suggests that Pugh's upper bound is fairly tight for the interesting cases.
This research was supported in part by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada under grant No. A-8237, the Information Technology Research Centre of Ontario, and FONDECYT (Chile) under grant 90-1263.
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Papadakis, T., Munro, J.I., Poblete, P.V. (1990). Analysis of the expected search cost in skip lists. In: Gilbert, J.R., Karlsson, R. (eds) SWAT 90. SWAT 1990. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 447. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-52846-6_86
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-52846-6_86
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