#max-heap

Heaps and Priority Queues

Introduction A heap is a specialized tree-based data structure that satisfies the heap property: in a max-heap, parent nodes are always greater than or equal to their children; in a min-heap, parent nodes are always less than or equal to their children. Heaps are the foundation for priority queues and enable efficient algorithms like heap sort and finding the kth largest element. Unlike Binary Search Trees, heaps don’t maintain a fully sorted order—they only guarantee the min/max element is at the root. Read more →

November 19, 2025