Summary on Splay Trees
one of the most popular ways to implement binary search tree
- relatively simple (splaying can also be done top down)
- no extra fields needed
- excellent temporal locality properties
- m>= n operations costs O(m log n), good amortized time complexity
on negative side
- all those rotations add a significant constant factor
- worst case for a single operation can be costly
big open problem: dynamic optimality conjecture