Getting the height of a binary tree

Question

So I am trying to create a method in my binary tree class that returns and integer that represents the height of the tree.
I tried to do this recursively and it seems the numbers are close to the actual ones, but never exact and I haven't really been able to find out where the problem lies. This is my code:
public int getHeight()
          int height;
          height = getHeightRecur(root);
          return height;
     public int getHeightRecur(BinTreeNode node)
          int theight;
          if(node == null)
               theight = 0;
          else
               theight = 1 + getMax(getHeightRecur(node.leftN), getHeightRecur(node.rightN));
          return theight;
     private int getMax(int x, int y)
          int result = 0;
          if(x>y)
               result = x;
          if(y>x)
               result = y;
          return result;
     }

Answer 1

j2ee_ubuntu wrote:
it may help at some extent..
private int getMax(int x, int y)
          int result = 0;
          if(x>y)
               result = x;
          else if(y>x)
               result = y;
else //when both are equal
result =x; OR result = y;//You can use one of them
          return result;
     }Edited by: j2ee_ubuntu on Nov 6, 2008 12:30 AMWhy not just use [ Math.max|http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/Math.html#max(int,%20int)] or write
public static int max(int a, int b) {
    return (a >= b) ? a : b;
}