Probabilistic AVL Trees (p-AVL): Relaxing Deterministic Balancing
Data Structures and Algorithms
2026-04-03 v1
Abstract
This paper studies the empirical behaviour of the p-AVL tree, a probabilistic variant of the AVL tree in which each imbalance is repaired with probability . This gives an exact continuous interpolation from , which recovers the BST endpoint, to , which recovers the standard AVL tree. Across random-order insertion experiments, we track rotations per node, total imbalance events, average depth, average height, and a global imbalance statistic . The main empirical result is that even small nonzero p already causes a strong structural change. The goal here is empirical rather than fully theoretical: to document the behaviour of the p-AVL family clearly and identify the main patterns.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.02223,
title = {Probabilistic AVL Trees (p-AVL): Relaxing Deterministic Balancing},
author = {Hayagriv Desikan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.02223},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
22 pages,15 figures