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Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture

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Andrew Krapivin upended the common thinking around hash tables, one of the best-studied tools in computer science.

The first hash tables date back to the early 1950s , and computer scientists have studied and used them ever since.

The new hash table can indeed find elements faster than was considered possible.

Computer scientist Andrew Yao , who would go on to win the A.M. Turing Award , asserted that among hash tables with a specific set of properties, the best way to find an individual element or an empty spot is to go through potential spots randomly.

He also stated that, in the worst-case scenario, where you’re searching for the last remaining open spot, you can never do better than x.

For 40 years , most computer scientists assumed that Yao ’s conjecture was true.