Top-Down Analysis of Path Compression

We present a new analysis of the worst-case cost of path compression, which is an operation that is used in various well-known "union-find" algorithms. In contrast to previous analyses which are essentially based on bottom-up approaches, our method proceeds top-down, yielding recurrence relations from which the various bounds arise naturally. In particular the famous quasi-linear bound involving the inverse Ackermann function can be derived without having to introduce the Ackermann function itself.