Chernoff--Hoeffding bounds are fundamental tools used in bounding the tail probabilities of the sums of bounded and independent random variables. We present a simple technique which gives slightly better bounds than these, and which more importantly requires only limited independence among the random variables, thereby importing a variety of standard results to the case of limited independence for free. Additional methods are also presented, and the aggregate results are sharp and provide a better understanding of the proof techniques behind these bounds. They also yield improved bounds for various tail probability distributions and enable improved approximation algorithms for jobshop scheduling. The "limited independence" result implies that a reduced amount of randomness and weaker sources of randomness are sufficient for randomized algorithms whose analyses use the Chernoff--Hoeffding bounds, e.g., the analysis of randomized algorithms for random sampling and oblivious packet routi...

We present a simple dictionary with worst case constant lookup time, equaling the theoretical performance of the classic dynamic perfect hashing scheme of Dietzfelbinger et al. (Dynamic perfect hashing: Upper and lower bounds. SIAM J. Comput., 23(4):738–761, 1994). The space usage is similar to that of binary search trees, i.e., three words per key on average. Besides being conceptually much simpler than previous dynamic dictionaries with worst case constant lookup time, our data structure is interesting in that it does not use perfect hashing, but rather a variant of open addressing where keys can be moved back in their probe sequences. An implementation inspired by our algorithm, but using weaker hash functions, is found to be quite practical. It is competitive with the best known dictionaries having an average case (but no nontrivial worst case) guarantee. Key Words: data structures, dictionaries, information retrieval, searching, hashing, experiments * Partially supported by the Future and Emerging Technologies programme of the EU

Hashing is fundamental to many algorithms and data structures widely used in practice. For theoretical analysis of hashing, there have been two main approaches. First, one can assume that the hash function is truly random, mapping each data item independently and uniformly to the range. This idealized model is unrealistic because a truly random hash function requires an exponential number of bits to describe. Alternatively, one can provide rigorous bounds on performance when explicit families of hash functions are used, such as 2-universal or O(1)-wise independent families. For such families, performance guarantees are often noticeably weaker than for ideal hashing. In practice, however, it is commonly observed that weak hash functions, including 2-universal hash functions, perform as predicted by the idealized analysis for truly random hash functions. In this paper, we try to explain this phenomenon. We demonstrate that the strong performance of universal hash functions in practice can arise naturally from a combination of the randomness of the hash function and the data. Specifically, following the large body of literature on random sources and randomness extraction, we model the data as coming from a “block source, ” whereby

ABSTRACT: A standard technique from the hashing literature is to use two hash functions h1(x) and h2(x) to simulate additional hash functions of the form gi(x) = h1(x) + ih2(x). We demonstrate that this technique can be usefully applied to Bloom filters and related data structures. Specifically, only two hash functions are necessary to effectively implement a Bloom filter without any loss in the asymptotic false positive probability. This leads to less computation and potentially less need for

A family of functions F that map [0; n] 7! [0; n], is said to be h-wise independent if any h points in [0; n] have an image, for randomly selected f 2 F , that is uniformly distributed. This paper gives both probabilistic and explicit randomized constructions of n ffl -wise independent functions, ffl ! 1, that can be evaluated in constant time for the standard random access model of computation. Simple extensions give comparable behavior for larger domains. As a consequence, many probabilistic algorithms can for the first time be shown to achieve their expected asymptotic performance for a feasible model of computation. This paper also establishes a tight tradeoff in the number of random seeds that must be precomputed for a random function that runs in time T and is h-wise independent. Categories and Subject Descriptors: E.2 [Data Storage Representation]: Hash-table representation; F.1.2 [Modes of Computation]: Probabilistic Computation; F2.3 [Tradepffs among Computational Measures]...

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Hashing with linear probing dates back to the 1950s, and is among the most studied algorithms. In recent years it has become one of the most important hash table organizations since it uses the cache of modern computers very well. Unfortunately, previous analyses rely either on complicated and space consuming hash functions, or on the unrealistic assumption of free access to a truly random hash function. Already Carter and Wegman, in their seminal paper on universal hashing, raised the question of extending their analysis to linear probing. However, we show in this paper that linear probing using a pairwise independent family may have expected logarithmic cost per operation. On the positive side, we show that 5-wise independence is enough to ensure constant expected time per operation. This resolves the question of finding a space and time efficient hash function that provably ensures good performance for linear probing.

Linear probing is one of the most popular implementations of dynamic hash tables storing all keys in a single array. When we get a key, we first hash it to a location. Next we probe consecutive locations until the key or an empty location is found. At STOC’07, Pagh et al. presented data sets where the standard implementation of 2-universal hashing leads to an expected number of Ω(log n) probes. They also showed that with 5-universal hashing, the expected number of probes is constant. Unfortunately, we do not have 5-universal hashing for, say, variable length strings. When we want to do such complex hashing from a complex domain, the generic standard solution is that we first do collision free hashing (w.h.p.) into a simpler intermediate domain, and second do the complicated hash function on this intermediate domain. Our contribution is that for an expected constant number of linear probes, it is suffices that each key has O(1) expected collisions with the first hash function, as long as the second hash function is 5-universal. This means that the intermediate domain can be n times smaller, and such a smaller intermediate domain typically means that the overall hash function can be made simpler and at least twice as fast. The same doubling of hashing speed for O(1) expected probes follows for most domains bigger than 32-bit integers, e.g., 64-bit integers and fixed length strings. In addition, we study how the overhead from linear probing diminishes as the array gets larger, and what happens if strings are stored directly as intervals of the array. These cases were not considered by Pagh et al. 1

This thesis is centered around one of the most basic information retrieval problems, namely that of storing and accessing the elements of a set. Each element in the set has some associated information that is returned along with it. The problem is referred to as the dictionary problem, due to the similarity to a bookshelf dictionary, which contains a set of words and has an explanation associated with each word. In the static version of the problem the set is fixed, whereas in the dynamic version, insertions and deletions of elements are possible. The approach

)-independent hash functions are required, matching an upper bound of [Indyk, SODA’99]. We also show that the multiply-shift scheme of Dietzfelbinger, most commonly used in practice, fails badly in both applications. Abstract. We show that linear probing requires 5-independent hash functions for expected constant-time performance, matching an upper bound of [Pagh et al. STOC’07]. For (1 + ε)-approximate minwise independence, we show that Ω(lg 1 ε 1