Shamira

[MiraMarshall]

Hash Table Practice

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Comprehension Questions

Question	Answer
Why is a good Hash Function Important?	A good hash function avoids collisions.
How can you judge if a hash function is good or not?	A hash function is good if: a) It spreads items over the internal array (avoid collisions). It has a low density - maximum number of collisions, b) Two keys that are similar should get very different indexes, c) Hashing appears to be random, d) It should be consistent! Same key and same internal array = same index, and e) It should be quick O(1).
Is there a perfect hash function? If so what is it?	There is no perfect hash function, but ideally there will be O(1) lookup.
Describe a strategy to handle collisions in a hash table	Through linear and quadratic probing. If there is a collision, linear probing will check the next bucket. Quadratic probing will use an algorithm/formula to check the next bucket.
Describe a situation where a hash table wouldn't be as useful as a binary search tree
What is one thing that is more clear to you on hash tables now	How they are made, using a hash function, and how collisions are handled.

[CheezItMan]

Nice work, you do have a small issue with your time complexity. Let me know if you need more clarification.

[CheezItMan]

But you also have a number of words, so you need to consider the array length as well.

If the words are small you could elect to consider sorting the words as a constant since it's pretty fast, but you definitely need to consider the number of strings.