Optimal Arrangement of Keys in a Hash Table
Name
MIT-LCS-TM-073.pdf
Size
3.06 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c1fd6a4d6c1febc2d31a5c01f367943e
Author(s)
Rivest, Ronald L.
Date Issued
July 1976
Series/Report no.
MIT-LCS-TM-073
Abstract
When open addressing is used to resolve collisions in a hash table, a given set of keys may be arranged in many ways; typically this depends on the order in which the keys are inserted. We show that arrangements minimizing either the average or worst-case number of probes required to retrieve any key in the table can be found using an algorithm for the assignment problem. The worst-case retrieval time can be reduced to 0(log2(M)) with probability 1-E(M), when storing M keys in a table of size M, where E(M) -> 0 aas M -> infinity. We also examine insertion algorithms to see how to apply these ideas for a dynamically changing set of keys.
Persistent DSpace Link
