Pattern 16: Union-find (disjoint set) + Weighted shortest paths (awareness)
Comes up in: DSA
This concept is being written. It gets the full five steps — explanation, predict, interview angle, practice with tests, and review cards. Here is exactly what it will cover, so you can study it elsewhere in the meantime.
What it covers
- find with path compression
- union by rank/size
- near-constant amortised time
- components and cycle detection
- Dijkstra with a min-heap
- why it fails with negative weights
- Bellman-Ford and A* awareness
Words you will know
What you will practise
- number-of-provinces (M)
- redundant-connection (M)
- accounts-merge (M)
- network-delay-time (M)
Interview questions this answers
- When would you use union-find instead of BFS?