Sleator and Tarjan: self-adjusting binary search trees

What changed

Introduced splaying and proved logarithmic amortized bounds for standard search-tree operations.

Scientific scope

The record is the exact two-author 1985 JACM paper. Its guarantees are amortized over operation sequences; it does not claim logarithmic worst-case time for every single operation or absorb other balanced, biased or persistent tree structures.

Evidence

The linked sources identify this contribution and its scope. WRS has not independently reconstructed the scientific claims. The record is the exact two-author 1985 JACM paper. Its guarantees are amortized over operation sequences; it does not claim logarithmic worst-case time for every single operation or absorb other balanced, biased or persistent tree structures.

Contributors

• Daniel Dominic Sleator · SCIENCE: Named source author of the scoped work; individual effort shares are not measured.
• Robert Endre Tarjan · SCIENCE: Named source author of the scoped work; individual effort shares are not measured.

• Sleator author page and full text for splay trees

Provisional WRS assessment, edition 2026-10-16.1. Independent expert calibration is pending. This grade does not certify correctness or assign ownership.

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