684 Redundant Connection

In this problem, a tree is anundirectedgraph that is connected and has no cycles.

The given input is a graph that started as a tree with N nodes (with distinct values 1, 2, ..., N), with one additional edge added. The added edge has two different vertices chosen from 1 to N, and was not an edge that already existed.

The resulting graph is given as a 2D-array ofedges. Each element ofedgesis a pair[u, v]withu < v, that represents anundirectededge connecting nodesuandv.

Return an edge that can be removed so that the resulting graph is a tree of N nodes. If there are multiple answers, return the answer that occurs last in the given 2D-array. The answer edge[u, v]should be in the same format, withu < v.

Example 1:

Input:
 [[1,2], [1,3], [2,3]]

Output:
 [2,3]

Explanation:
 The given undirected graph will be like this:
  1
 / \
2 - 3

Example 2:

Input:
 [[1,2], [2,3], [3,4], [1,4], [1,5]]

Output:
 [1,4]

Explanation:
 The given undirected graph will be like this:
5 - 1 - 2
    |   |
    4 - 3

Note:

The size of the input 2D-array will be between 3 and 1000.

Every integer represented in the 2D-array will be between 1 and N, where N is the size of the input array.

The Idea: This is a disjoint set problem, which is essentially used for the purpose of identifying a cycle in an undirected graph. What we do is continuously perform a union on each (i,j) if both i and j are already not in the same union. If they are, they are the cause of the cycle.

Complexity: O(n) (bounded by Inverse Ackermann)

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