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Nice article. Red State vs. Blue State in bipartisan US politics is an inappropriately meaningless binary label while red node vs. black node in a binary tree

Nice article. Red State vs. Blue State in bipartisan US politics is an inappropriately meaningless binary label while red node vs. black node in a binary tree is an appropriately meaningless binary label. I feel like that makes sense to me.

aidenn0 5y ago
In the US, the first color electoral map to be televised used blue for Republican. In 2000 Red was used for Republicans and since that year involved lots of viewing of the maps due to the protected counting, it stuck
- toast0 5y ago
  In 2000 and earlier elections, different networks used different colors, without a lot of consistency from election to election. It was only after that election that there became a strong immutable consensus on what color was what.
nvader 5y ago
I just read your comment about red/black, and I must confess, until this point I would have agreed that it was meaningless. However, I just looked over the definition of the data structure, and I think I can propose better names. Black nodes are 'counted' nodes, whereas red are 'uncounted'. Uncounted nodes may sit sandwiched between counted nodes, but are not allowed to follow each other... Because relaxing that rule could lead to an explosion of uncounted nodes. Remember that the length of the path, in terms of counted nodes, to every leaf is the same. Because the uncounted nodes may be sandwiched between those counted nodes, this gives us the property we want that the length of the path of actual nodes, counted and uncounted, on the longest path is never more than twice that of the shortest path. The longest path can have every layer be a counted-uncounted sandwich, while the shortest will only have counted nodes. I felt like changing the name added something.
pjc50 5y ago
Not to mention that the rest of the world uses "red" for various sorts of socialist / social democrat / center-left parties (e.g. "traffic light coalition", "watermelon coalition"), whereas the US uses it for the right - in the map context only. Red/black makes me think of the card suits.
jamal-kumar 5y ago
Just north in Canada, red means liberal and blue means conservative
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  AFAIK, in all the non US world, red means "left" ever since it was the color used by socialists and communist. I think blue was picked in opposition to this, but that's just an uninformed assumption about history n my part.
  - notacoward 5y ago
    Red vs. blue was also a thing in the American Revolutionary War. Not quite sure how (or if) it relates to other uses, but figured I'd throw it out there in case someone else can make the connection.

aidenn0 5y ago

In the US, the first color electoral map to be televised used blue for Republican. In 2000 Red was used for Republicans and since that year involved lots of viewing of the maps due to the protected counting, it stuck

toast0 5y ago
In 2000 and earlier elections, different networks used different colors, without a lot of consistency from election to election. It was only after that election that there became a strong immutable consensus on what color was what.

nvader 5y ago

I just read your comment about red/black, and I must confess, until this point I would have agreed that it was meaningless. However, I just looked over the definition of the data structure, and I think I can propose better names. Black nodes are 'counted' nodes, whereas red are 'uncounted'. Uncounted nodes may sit sandwiched between counted nodes, but are not allowed to follow each other... Because relaxing that rule could lead to an explosion of uncounted nodes. Remember that the length of the path, in terms of counted nodes, to every leaf is the same. Because the uncounted nodes may be sandwiched between those counted nodes, this gives us the property we want that the length of the path of actual nodes, counted and uncounted, on the longest path is never more than twice that of the shortest path. The longest path can have every layer be a counted-uncounted sandwich, while the shortest will only have counted nodes. I felt like changing the name added something.

pjc50 5y ago

Not to mention that the rest of the world uses "red" for various sorts of socialist / social democrat / center-left parties (e.g. "traffic light coalition", "watermelon coalition"), whereas the US uses it for the right - in the map context only. Red/black makes me think of the card suits.

jamal-kumar 5y ago

Just north in Canada, red means liberal and blue means conservative

BurningFrog 5y ago
AFAIK, in all the non US world, red means "left" ever since it was the color used by socialists and communist. I think blue was picked in opposition to this, but that's just an uninformed assumption about history n my part.
- notacoward 5y ago
  Red vs. blue was also a thing in the American Revolutionary War. Not quite sure how (or if) it relates to other uses, but figured I'd throw it out there in case someone else can make the connection.