Blazing Fast Lookup With Hash Tables

Exercises for Chapter #7 of A Common-Sense Guide To Data Structures and Algorithms

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Chapter Exercises

Exercise #1

Assume that we have a hash table with a superb load factor, which means that on average, there's only one piece of data in each cell. Describe in Big O Notation the efficiency of:

  1. Reading from the hash table.
  2. Inserting into the hash table.
  3. Deleting from the hash table.

Exercise #2

While we mentioned that an ideal load factor is 0.7, I’ve seen others say that 1 is an ideal load factor. If we followed this new advice, and we wanted to store 100 key/value pairs in a hash table, how many cells should it have?

Exercise #3

If we had a hash function that distributes data evenly, and a load factor of 3, how many key/values would be stuffed into each cell on average?

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