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Decode the Coding Interview in Elixir: Real-World Examples

Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum

Explore how to compute the maximum path sum in a binary tree by understanding node contributions and recursive methods. This lesson helps you develop strategies to handle paths with or without the root and optimize calculations through traversal and condition checking.

We'll cover the following...

Description

A path in a binary tree is defined as:

A sequence of nodes such that each pair of adjacent nodes must have an edge connecting them. A node can only be included in a path at most once. Moreover, including the root in the path is not compulsory.

The path sum can be calculated by adding up all nodes’ values in the path. To solve this problem, we will calculate the maximum path sum given the root of a binary tree so that there won’t be any greater path than it in the tree.

Example

Let’s discuss the example below:

Coding exercise

Elixir
defmodule Solution do
  def max_path_sum(_root) do
    # write your code here
  end
end

Solution

We’ll start by simplifying the problem and looking at the implementation of the max_contrib(node) function which takes a node as an argument and computes a maximum contribution that this node and one ...