K-ary tree

A k-ary tree is a special kind of tree where each node has at most k children. A tree is like a family tree, but instead of people, it's made up of nodes (like a point or a dot). Each node represents something, like a person or an idea, and the connections between nodes represent relationships between those things.

Think of a simple k-ary tree like a group of friends who all have phones. Each friend can only have up to k phone numbers saved in their phone book. So, if k=2, each friend can only have two numbers saved. If a friend has more than two people they need to call, they can create another group of two numbers and add that group as a child of their node.

Just like a family tree, each child node can have its own children, and those children can have their own children. This creates a branching structure with a central parent node and lots of smaller child nodes. In computer science, k-ary trees are often used to store and organize large amounts of data, like phone numbers or webpages.

For example, think of a webpage that has a lot of links to other pages. Each link could be represented by a child node of the original page's node, and those child nodes could have their own children that represent links on those pages. By organizing pages in this way, it becomes easier to search and access specific pages quickly.

In summary, a k-ary tree is a special kind of tree where each node can have up to k children. It's like a family tree for things other than people, and is often used in computer science for organizing and storing data.