The last Internal Node of a Complete Binary Tree

See this from my Blog https://dyingdown.github.io/2021/08/30/The-last-Internal-Node-of-a-Complete-Binary-Tree/

This problem derives from Heap Sort.

When you start to build the heap, you should start with the last internal node of the tree. And the index is usually $\frac{N}{2}-1$, N is the total length of the array.

But why is that ?

Complete Binary Tree

First, you need to know that when representing a tree using array, the tree is a Complete Binary Tree. See the following picture.

The nodes in the array are stored like this: [A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J]

And the number of nodes $N$ can be represent as $2^0+2^1+\dots +2^k+s$. （$k=depth-1$, $s$ is the number of nodes in the deepest layer）

Proof

I’m proving this in a graphical layer.

First, let’s complete the tree to make it a Full Binary Tree.

As we can see, before completion, the last internal node is $E$.

Index of $E$ =$N$ - Red_Nodes - Deepest_Layer_Nodes

Let’s solve one by one.

1. Deepest_Layer_Nodes($s$):

   $$\begin{gathered} N=2^0+2^1+\dots +2^k+s \\ \Rightarrow s=N-2^0-2^1-\cdots -2^k \end{gathered}$$
   $k+1$ is the depth of the tree. s

2. Red_Nodes( R )

   As seen from the graph, number of red nodes is relative with the gray nodes.

   Assume $F$ is number of nodes of Full Binary Tree, $D$ is the number of Gray Nodes.

   $$\begin{gathered} F=2^0+2^1+\dots +2^{k+1} \\ D=F-N \end{gathered}$$

   From the previous graph we can see that when D is odd, $R=(D-1)/2$

   Now let’s see another graph, when the number of gray nodes is even.

   

   When D is even, $R=D/2$

   $\therefore R=floor(D/2)$

3. Then $E=2^0+\dots +2^k-R$

   $\because R=floor\left( \dfrac{\left( 2^{0}+\ldots +2^{k+1}-N\right) }{2}\right) $

   $=floor\left(\frac{1}{2}+2^0+\dots +2^k-\frac{N}{2}\right)=floor\left(\frac{1}{2}\right)+floor\left(2^0+\dots +2^k\right)-floor\left(\frac{N}{2}\right)$

   $=2^0+\dots +2^k-floor\left(\frac{N}{2}\right)$

   $\therefore E=floor\left(\frac{N}{2}\right)$

4. Because the index started from 0, so $E=floor\left(\frac{N}{2}\right)-1$