A trio of researchers that includes William Kuszmaul — a computer science PhD student at MIT — has made a discovery that could lead to more efficient data storage and retrieval in computers. The team’s findings relate to so-called “linear-probing hash tables,” which were introduced in 1954 and are among the oldest, simplest, and fastest data structures available today. Data structures provide ways of organizing and storing data in computers, with hash tables being one of the most commonly utilized approaches. In a linear-probing hash table, the positions in which…
