Is Maximum Depth of N-ary Tree easy or hard?

Maximum Depth of N-ary Tree is classified as an Easy problem. The challenge focuses on understanding tree traversal rather than complex algorithms. Candidates familiar with DFS or BFS on trees can usually implement the solution quickly.

Maximum Depth of N-ary Tree Python/Java solution

In Python or Java, the typical solution uses recursion. Iterate through each child node, compute its depth recursively, track the maximum, and return maxDepth + 1 for the current node. Iterative BFS with a queue is another valid implementation in both languages.

How to solve Maximum Depth of N-ary Tree in O(n)?

Traverse the tree using either recursive DFS or iterative BFS. DFS computes the depth of each subtree and returns the maximum value among children plus one. BFS processes nodes level by level using a queue and counts how many levels exist. Both approaches visit each node once, resulting in O(n) time complexity.

What is the best approach for Maximum Depth of N-ary Tree?

The recursive Depth-First Search (DFS) approach is the most common solution. It recursively computes the maximum depth of each child and returns 1 plus the maximum child depth. This method runs in O(n) time and O(h) space, where h is the height of the tree, and closely follows the recursive structure of trees.

Is Maximum Depth of N-ary Tree asked at Google/Amazon/Meta?

Tree depth and traversal problems frequently appear in interviews at companies like Amazon, Google, and Meta. Variations include binary tree depth, N-ary tree traversal, and computing height or levels of a tree. Interviewers use these problems to evaluate recursion and graph traversal fundamentals.

What data structure is used in Maximum Depth of N-ary Tree?

The problem uses an N-ary tree data structure where each node maintains a list of children. DFS solutions rely on the call stack for recursion, while BFS solutions use a queue to perform level-order traversal.

What is the time complexity of Maximum Depth of N-ary Tree?

The time complexity is O(n) because every node in the N-ary tree must be visited once to determine the deepest path. Both DFS and BFS implementations traverse each node exactly once. The difference lies only in how nodes are explored.

Description Solution Video 10:54

559. Maximum Depth of N-ary Tree

Easy73.5% acceptance2 companies

Given a n-ary tree, find its maximum depth.

The maximum depth is the number of nodes along the longest path from the root node down to the farthest leaf node.

Nary-Tree input serialization is represented in their level order traversal, each group of children is separated by the null value (See examples).

Example 1:

Input: root = [1,null,3,2,4,null,5,6]
Output: 3

Example 2:

Input: root = [1,null,2,3,4,5,null,null,6,7,null,8,null,9,10,null,null,11,null,12,null,13,null,null,14]
Output: 5

Constraints:

The total number of nodes is in the range [0, 10⁴].
The depth of the n-ary tree is less than or equal to 1000.

Asked at 2 companies

Datadog Amazon

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10:54

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559. Maximum Depth of N-ary Tree

Asked at 2 companies

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