In a surprising turn of events, a young computer scientist, Andrew Krapivin, and his colleagues have challenged a 40-year-old conjecture in computer science by developing a new kind of hash table that defies previous assumptions about its efficiency. Contrary to widely accepted beliefs, their innovative hash table drastically reduces the time required to find specific elements, an achievement that has impressed experts in the field, including those at prestigious universities such as Carnegie Mellon and the University of Waterloo. The team’s findings not only debunked longstanding theories but also introduced an unexpected breakthrough in achieving constant average query times.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/undergraduate-upends-a-40-year-old-data-science-conjecture-20250210/