Second Test and BST Mutation

    After much reflection and conversing with other students about our second midterm, I feel that each question was exceptionally fair to the material we have studied so far. As I have posted about in the past, I try not to estimate my grade before I receive a marked test back but I felt reasonably confident with each question. This being said, I am concerned that I will not be able to see a marked copy of my test due to the TA strike. The impending modification of this course due to a lack of staff might also greatly impact my study strategies of reviewing previous tests and assignments, ultimately effecting my final exam grade. Perhaps worse, I worry that I may never see a grade for my beloved minimax.py on Assignment 2.

    With regards to course content this week, I have found this idea of binary search tree mutation conceptually quite simple however, the implementation of the insert function was deeply disturbing to me. Even after reading the posted code (from Diane's lecture materials) I was still quite confused about how each case was being handled. My fears were quickly put to rest after completing the exercises in Lab 08, where I spent much time becoming comfortable with these tree mutating functions. Not only this, but I spent much time playing with all of the code in order to test my knowledge, especially for the "balanced_delete" function. I had no issue with the rest of the lab except for the question asking "Can you improve the height in some way?". I am confused by the question, is this asking if we can lower the height of the tree? Or is it asking if we can somehow modify the code for the height method in order to improve its efficiency? If the latter was meant, then I am not sure how to proceed as the code for the height method appears (to me) to be as efficient as possible. I will be asking about this on Piazza but to anyone reading this who knows, please let me know in the comments.