What is Lowest Common Ancestor in Binary Tree?

The lowest common ancestor is the lowest node in the tree that has both n1 and n2 as descendants, where n1 and n2 are the nodes for which we wish to find the LCA. Hence, the LCA of a binary tree with nodes n1 and n2 is the shared ancestor of n1 and n2 that is located farthest from the root. 

Lowest Common Ancestor in a Binary Tree

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What is Lowest Common Ancestor in Binary Tree?

The lowest common ancestor is the lowest node in the tree that has both n1 and n2 as descendants, where n1 and n2 are the nodes for which we wish to find the LCA. Hence, the LCA of a binary tree with nodes n1 and n2 is the shared ancestor of n1 and n2 that is located farthest from the root....

Application of Lowest Common Ancestor(LCA):

To determine the distance between pairs of nodes in a tree: the distance from n1 to n2 can be computed as the distance from the root to n1, plus the distance from the root to n2, minus twice the distance from the root to their lowest common ancestor....

Lowest Common Ancestor in a Binary Tree By Storing paths from root to n1 and root to n2:

The idea of this approach is to store the path from the root to n1 and root to n2 in two separate data structures. Then look simultaneously into the values stored in the data structure, and look for the first mismatch....

Lowest Common Ancestor in a Binary Tree By Single Traversal:

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