In fact, some studying on data structures probably leads to the conclusion that it is impossible to guarantee that an unbounded set/map to have access performance under O(log(N)).
emil-lp 11 minutes ago [-]
Expected
brudgers 19 hours ago [-]
But could we create a hash table that would be truly constant-time? No. As the size of your data structure grows, it requires progressively slower memory.
At a large enough size to be interesting, everything is dominated by IO and because IO is slow, at any interesting size performance is a matter of tailoring the implementation to the details of the data {0}.
Engineering is hard work, not naive math.
[0] Data might be arbitrary but it is never random. Not being random is what makes it data.
Nobody really says that, nor is it a model. It is the expected time complexity.
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/HashMap....
In fact, some studying on data structures probably leads to the conclusion that it is impossible to guarantee that an unbounded set/map to have access performance under O(log(N)).
At a large enough size to be interesting, everything is dominated by IO and because IO is slow, at any interesting size performance is a matter of tailoring the implementation to the details of the data {0}.
Engineering is hard work, not naive math.
[0] Data might be arbitrary but it is never random. Not being random is what makes it data.