Abstract.This paper provides a characterization of the storage needs of a quadtree when used as an index to access large volumes of 2-dimensional data. It is shown that the page occupancy for data in random order approaches 33 %. A precise mathematical analysis that involves a modicum of hypergeometric functions and dilogarithms, together with some computer algebra is presented.A brief survey of the analysis of storage usage in tree structures is included. The 33% ratio for quadtrees is to be compared to the figures for binary search trees (50%), tries (69%), and quadtries (46%).
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