Protection number in plane trees
CITATION: Heuberger, C. & Prodinger, H. 2017. Protection number in plane trees. Applicable Analysis and Discrete Mathematics, 11(2):314-326. doi:10.2298/AADM1702314H.
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Article
The protection number of a plane tree is the minimal distance of the root to a leaf; this definition carries over to an arbitrary node in a plane tree by considering the maximal subtree having this node as a root. We study the the protection number of a uniformly chosen random tree of size n and also the protection number of a uniformly chosen node in a uniformly chosen random tree of size n. The method is to apply singularity analysis to appropriate generating functions. Additional results are provided as well.