A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible.

“Hash tables are among the oldest data structures we have. And they’re still one of the most efficient ways to store data.” Yet open questions remain about how they work, he said.

That assumption refers to hash tables, and a conjecture based on work from the 1980s regarding the optimal way to store and query the data in them. The student, formerly of Rutgers University in ...

Bloom filters are an essential class of probabilistic data structures designed for rapid set membership testing while minimising memory usage. By utilising multiple hash functions, these ...