LeetCode题目笔记（四) -- Check if a binary tree is balanced

Problem: Check if a binary tree is balanced.

Problem Description: Given a binary tree, determine if it is height-balanced.
For this problem, a height-balanced binary tree is defined as a binary tree in which the depth of the two subtrees of every node never differ by more than 1.

Give a simple solution with complexity O(logn logn)

非常直观的想法是直接使用recursion，计算left tree的高度，然后计算right tree的高度，然后check他们是不是相差大于1. 但是这样的问题是，在每一层recursion计算高度的过程中，最底层的leaf node的高度都要被重新计算，这个过程中产生了冗余的调用，这和fibonacci数列的recursion解法的问题是一样的。如果我们能有什么方法，使得对于每个node，都只计算一次高度，那么，就有更好的解法。

先给一个O(n^2)的解法：

class Solution {
public:
    int getHeight( TreeNode *root )
    {
        if( root == NULL ) return 0;
        if( root->left == NULL && root->right == NULL ) return 1;
        else
            return 1+ max( getHeight( root->left ), getHeight( root->right ) );
    }
    
    
    bool isBalanced(TreeNode *root) {
        // Start typing your C/C++ solution below
        // DO NOT write int main() function
        if( root == NULL ) return true;
        if( root->left == NULL && root->right == NULL ) return true;
        
        if( isBalanced( root->left ) && isBalanced ( root->right ) )
        {
            int leftHeight = getHeight( root->left );
            int rightHeight = getHeight( root->right );
            
            if( abs( leftHeight-rightHeight ) > 1 )
                return false;
            else
                return true;    
        }
        else
            return false;
    }
};