Can anybody give me an intuitive explanation of why the Ackermann function http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ackermann_function is related to the amortized complexity of union-find algorithm used for disjoint sets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disjoint-set_data_structure?
The analysis in Tarjan's data structure book isn't very intuitive.
I also looked it up in Introduction to Algorithms, but it also seems too rigorous and non-intuitive.
Thanks for your help!