Western Governors University (WGU) ICSC2100 C949 Data Structures and Algorithms I Practice Exam

The term that describes the longest simple path from the root to a leaf node is height. In the context of trees, the height of a tree is defined as the length of the longest path from the root node to any leaf node within the tree. This path includes the number of edges traversed from the root to the furthest leaf, which is a crucial metric for understanding the structure and efficiency of tree-based data structures.

Height is important because it directly impacts the performance of many operations on trees, such as search, insertion, and deletion. In a balanced tree, the height is minimized, leading to more efficient operations, whereas an unbalanced tree could have a height that approaches the number of nodes, resulting in more time-consuming operations akin to those in a linked list.

The other terms have different meanings in the context of tree structures. Length typically refers to distance but is not specifically designated as the longest path in tree terminology. Level pertains to the depth of nodes, indicating how far a node is from the root, while width refers to the number of nodes at a given level of the tree. Thus, height is the accurate term to use for describing the longest simple path from the root to a leaf node.