What is the best algorithm to find the minimum element in max heap?

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What is the best algorithm(in terms of time complexity) to find the minimum element in max heap?

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The minimum element in a max-heap is guaranteed to be in the last (n/2 + 1) items, where n is the number of items in the heap. So the best way to find it is to do a sequential scan of the last n/2 items. Consider, for example, a heap with 5 items:

    5
  4   1
 3 2

The smallest item will never have children, so it must be either on the bottom row of the heap, or on the next row up.