We design a variation of skip lists that performs well for generally biased access sequences. Given n items, each with a positive weight wi, 1 i n, the time to access item i is O 1 + log W wi , where W = n i=1 wi; the data structure is dynamic. We present deterministic and randomized variations, which are nearly identical; the deterministic one simply ensures the balance condition that the randomized one achieves probabilistically. We use the same method to analyze both.
Amitabha Bagchi, Adam L. Buchsbaum, Michael T. Goo