English

A combinatorial analysis of the average time for open-address hash coding insertion

Combinatorics 2012-08-30 v1 Data Structures and Algorithms

Abstract

In analysing a well-known hash-coding method, Knuth gave an exact expression for the average number of rejections encountered by players of a variant of musical chairs. We study a variant more closely related to musical chairs itself and deduce the same expression by a purely combinatorial approach.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1208.5956,
  title  = {A combinatorial analysis of the average time for open-address hash coding insertion},
  author = {Vaughan R. Pratt},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1208.5956},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

December 1973, revised 1974

R2 v1 2026-06-21T21:56:54.772Z