🛠️ Heaps for Interviews

A Heap is a special tree-based data structure that satisfies the heap property:

• Min Heap: Parent node ≤ its children
• Max Heap: Parent node ≥ its children

Heaps are commonly used to implement priority queues, scheduling, and for efficient selection problems like finding the k smallest/largest elements.

🌳 Structure and Properties

• Binary Heap is a complete binary tree (all levels filled left to right).
• Typically implemented using an array:
  • For index i:
    • left = 2i + 1
    • right = 2i + 2
    • parent = Math.floor((i - 1) / 2)

🔄 Types of Heaps

✅ Min Heap

Smallest element is at the root.

ts// Example: [1, 3, 6, 5, 9, 8]
       1
     /   \
    3     6
   / \   /
  5   9 8