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Centroid Decomposition

Authors: Siyong Huang, Benjamin Qi

Decomposing a tree to facilitate path computations.

Introduction

Centroids

A centroid of a tree is defined as a node such that when the tree is rooted at it, no other nodes have a subtree of size greater than N2\frac{N}{2}.

Focus Problem – try your best to solve this problem before continuing!

View Internal Solution

We can find a centroid in a tree by starting at the root. Each step, loop through all of its children. If all of its children have subtree size less than or equal to N2\frac{N}{2}, then it is a centroid. Otherwise, move to the child with a subtree size that is more than N2\frac{N}{2} and repeat until you find a centroid.

Implementation

C++

#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
using namespace std;
const int maxn = 200010;
int n;
vector<int> adj[maxn];
int subtree_size[maxn];

Java

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
public class FindCentroid {
public static int[] subSize;
public static List<Integer>[] adj;
public static int N;
public static void main(String[] args) {
Kattio io = new Kattio();

Centroid decomposition

Focus Problem – try your best to solve this problem before continuing!

Centroid Decomposition is a divide and conquer technique for trees. Centroid Decomposition works by repeated splitting the tree and each of the resulting subgraphs at the centroid, producing O(logN)\mathcal{O}(\log N) layers of subgraphs.

Resources
Carpanese

how to solve above problem

Tanuj Khattar

Illustrated Guide + Problem Walkthrough

CF

blog + video for above problem. LCA isn't necessary though.

GFG

Warning!

The implementation by Carpanese (ll. 20-21) leads to a segmentation fault due to an invalidated iterator in the range-based for loop after erasing the element.

Implementation

General centroid code is shown below.

C++

vector<vector<int>> adj;
vector<bool> is_removed;
vector<int> subtree_size;
/** DFS to calculate the size of the subtree rooted at `node` */
int get_subtree_size(int node, int parent = -1) {
subtree_size[node] = 1;
for (int child : adj[node]) {
if (child == parent || is_removed[child]) { continue; }
subtree_size[node] += get_subtree_size(child, node);

Java

private static class Centroid {
int n;
int[][] g;
int[] size;
int[] parent;
boolean[] seen;
Centroid(int n, int[][] g) {
this.n = n;
this.g = g;

Solution - Xenia & Tree

For every node, there are at most logN\log N centroid components that include this node, where NN denotes the number of nodes. Let's call the centroid whose component contains one node the centroid ancestor of this node. Also note that the path between every two nodes in the tree must include one of their common centroid ancestors, since the tree is being split into subtrees with the centroids as their respective roots. If we store the distance to the nearest red node for every centroid, we can query the minimal distance between any node and the nearest red node by calculating the minimum distance between the node and one of its centroid ancestors with the minimal distance from that centroid to a red node. To paint a node red, we just update all centroid ancestors of this node. Both operations can be done in O(logN)\mathcal{O} (\log N) time, as there are at most that many centroid ancestors for one node.

C++

#include <bits/stdc++.h>
using namespace std;
// a number that is large enough while not causing overflow
const int INF = 1e9;
vector<vector<int>> adj;
vector<int> subtree_size;
// min_dist[v] := the minimal distance between v and a red node
vector<int> min_dist;

Problems

StatusSourceProblem NameDifficultyTags
CFEasy
Show TagsCentroid
Baltic OIEasy
Show TagsCentroid
CSESEasy
Show TagsCentroid
CSESEasy
Show TagsBIT, Centroid
Old GoldEasy
Show TagsCentroid
IOINormal
Show TagsCentroid, Merging
PlatNormal
Show TagsCentroid
CFNormal
Show TagsCentroid
CFNormal
Show TagsCentroid, NT
CFNormal
Show TagsCentroid, DP
JOINormal
Show TagsCentroid
COCINormal
Show TagsCentroid, Hashing
DMOJHard
Show TagsCentroid
DMOJHard
Show TagsCentroid
JOIHard
Show TagsCentroid, Small to Large
PlatVery Hard
Show TagsCentroid

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