Random hyperplane search trees

A hyperplane search tree is a binary tree used to store a set S of n d-dimensional data points. In a random hyperplane search tree for S, the root represents a hyperplane defined by d data points drawn uniformly at random from S. The remaining data points are split by the hyperplane, and the definition is used recursively on each subset. We assume that the data are points in general position in Rd. We show that, uniformly over all such data sets S, the expected height of the hyperplane tree is not worse than that of the k-d tree or the ordinary one-dimensional random binary search tree, and that, for any fixed d ≥ 3, the expected height improves over that of the standard random binary search tree by an asymptotic factor strictly greater than one. © 2009 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.