Constraints are placed on the data or node arrangement of a tree to solve difficult problems like efficient search.

A binary tree is a type of tree where each parent can have no more than two children, known as the left child and right child.

Further constraints make a binary search tree:

• Left child values must be lesser than their parent.
• Right child values must be greater than their parent.

The constraints of a binary search tree allow us to search the tree efficiently. At each node, we can discard half of the remaining possible values!

Let’s walk through locating the value 31.

1. Start at the root: 39
2. 31 < 39, we move to the left child: 23
3. 23 < 31, we move to the right child: 35
4. 31 < 35, we move to the left child: 31
5. We found the value 31!

In a dataset of fifteen elements, we only made three comparisons. What a deal!