Binary Search Trees, or Networking with Schmucks

There’s are lot blog posts out there that talk about nodes, and (in my opinion) seem to overcomplicate the fundamental essence of a Binary Search Tree.

With that in mind, I’ve got an algonalogy up my sleeve that makes it easy to understand and hard to forget. Have you ever been to a business networking event? Ever meet a guy like this??

He’s probably a Real Estate Agent, or someone trying to sell you term life insurance, or like an “annuity” brah. Anyways, you ever notice that he makes his way around the mixer with a real sense of purpose?

At first glance it seems random, but as he traverses the room, person to person, you get the impression that each successive person is an “upgrade” from the last. You also get the impression that doesn’t really view the people by their names, but by their annual income.

Enter the Binary Search Tree. Inside the confines of Chaz’s handsome noggin is a Binary Search Tree. It starts with him and his salary. In typical tech speak, he’s the starting node. Everyone else is also a node represented by their salary.

Furthermore, Chaz has learned a memory trick or two in his day, and to make the most efficient use of his time at the mixer he wants to talk to the best people possible. He ONLY wants to talk to people that make more money than him, but if he gets stuck talking to “the losers” he wants to talk to the best he can find.

To do this he has a simple rule: He’s “Top of the Food Chain” and if you make less money than him, then you’re a node on his left leg, you’re a loser. If you make more money than him, you’re a node on his right, a winner. But Chaz has more rules to stay focused on who he talks to…

• A loser’s loser can lose to infinity.
• A winner’s winner can win to infinity and beyond.
• A down-line loser on the winner leg will never be worth less than Chaz… in other words, even a loser on the winner’s side will still “win more” than him.
• A down-line winner on the loser’s leg will never be worth more than Chaz… in other words, even a “winning loser” is still a loser compared to him.
• And he applies these same rules for every down-line “node” err “person” (winner or loser) that he’s prospecting on.

But words don’t really do Chaz’s approach to working a networking event justice. So here’s a picture to illustrate how Chaz traverses a business mixer.

BONUS TIME: While Chaz has a photographic memory that he uses to keep track of Who’s Who at the mixer, who he SHOULD and SHOULD NOT talk to, there is an awesome MEMORY ENHANCING side effect. In fact, it’s part of the reason he memorizes salaries in Binary Search Tree fashion… that side effect is ::drum roll:: once Chaz avoids talking to the 40k parking attendant, he can totally free up some mind-space by shedding the names of everyone else on the loser leg.

… of course … there IS more to Binary Search Trees than this. But, now, hopefully, you have a more accessible foundation to build on. (or at the very least, a better way to network at a business mixer).