Minimum height trees

Time: O(N); Space: O(N); medium

For a undirected graph with tree characteristics, we can choose any node as the root. The result graph is then a rooted tree. Among all possible rooted trees, those with minimum height are called Minimum Height Trees (MHTs). Given such a graph, write a function to find all the MHTs and return a list of their root labels.

Format The graph contains N nodes which are labeled from 0 to n - 1. You will be given the number N and a list of undirected edges (each edge is a pair of labels).

You can assume that no duplicate edges will appear in edges. Since all edges are undirected, [0, 1] is the same as [1, 0] and thus will not appear together in edges.

Example 1:

Input: n = 4, edges = [[1, 0], [1, 2], [1, 3]]

  0
  |
  1
 / \
2   3

Output: [1]

Example 2:

Input: n = 6, edges = [[0, 3], [1, 3], [2, 3], [4, 3], [5, 4]]

0  1  2
 \ | /
   3
   |
   4
   |
   5

Output: [3, 4]

Hint:

  • How many MHTs can a graph have at most?

Notes:

  • According to the definition of tree on Wikipedia: “a tree is an undirected graph in which any two vertices are connected by exactly one path. In other words, any connected graph without simple cycles is a tree.”

  • The height of a rooted tree is the number of edges on the longest downward path between the root and a leaf.

[1]:
from collections import defaultdict

class Solution1(object):
    def findMinHeightTrees(self, n, edges):
        """
        :type n: int
        :type edges: List[List[int]]
        :rtype: List[int]
        """
        if n == 1:
            return [0]

        neighbors = defaultdict(set)
        for u, v in edges:
            neighbors[u].add(v)
            neighbors[v].add(u)

        pre_level, unvisited = [], set()
        for i in range(n):
            if len(neighbors[i]) == 1:  # A leaf.
                pre_level.append(i)
            unvisited.add(i)

        # A graph can have 2 MHTs at most.
        # BFS from the leaves until the number
        # of the unvisited nodes is less than 3.
        while len(unvisited) > 2:
            cur_level = []
            for u in pre_level:
                unvisited.remove(u)
                for v in neighbors[u]:
                    if v in unvisited:
                        neighbors[v].remove(u)
                        if len(neighbors[v]) == 1:
                            cur_level.append(v)
            pre_level = cur_level

        return list(unvisited)
[2]:
s = Solution1()
n = 4
edges = [[1, 0], [1, 2], [1, 3]]
assert s.findMinHeightTrees(n, edges) == [1]
n = 6
edges = [[0, 3], [1, 3], [2, 3], [4, 3], [5, 4]]
assert s.findMinHeightTrees(n, edges) == [3, 4]