On Thu, 2007-12-13 at 09:55 -0500, Denis Bueno wrote: . . .
More importantly for this discussion, however: Fibonacci heaps have nothing to do with calculating the fibonacci numbers, and you don't even need to know what the fibonacci sequence is to use fibonacci heaps. (You discover what it is, if you didn't know, when you do a complexity analysis of fibonacci heaps, but, that's only useful for proving how efficient the heaps can be.) Therefore, I don't think one can successfully argue that fibonacci numbers are important because a heap has "Fibonacci" the name in its name.
Just a nit, but I thought it worth mentioning. =]
That's fair, and Cormen et. al. said pretty much the same thing in Chap. 20. I think the argument is that the Fibonacci sequence is important to *understanding* the Fibonacci heap. Still your point is well taken. -- Bill Wood