Making my HashTable implementation efficient with Linear Probing? - hash

I have to make a hashtable with openAddressing and use Linearprobing to resolve collisions.
I resize the array when it's about 40% full. The compression function compressing using a simple % command so when I resize ( double the array) i also change the factor by which I mod the hashcodes in my compression function. This makes inserting a file with 100 000 strings pretty fast since it really avoids clustering. The problem is that the look up time now is very high because I can't go directly to the index by taking the hashcodes because not all entries were modded by the same mod factor ? i,e the first 1000 entries may have indices given as hashcode%1000 ,now when the array resized to 2000 the next entries' hashcodes come like hashcode%2000. I did this to avoid lots of linear probing and to make it more evenly spread.
So how can i make my search faster ?

Related

Hash a Sequence of positive/negative integers

I have a file with millions of lines (actually it's an online stream of data, which means we are receiving it line by line) , each line consists of an array of integers which is not sorted (positive and negative) there's no limit for the each number and the lengths are different and we might have duplicate values in one line,
I want to remove the duplicate lines (if 2 lines have same values regardless of how they are ordered we consider them duplicate), is there any good hashing function ?
We want to do this in O(n) while n is number of lines (we can assume that the maximum possibele number of elements in each line is constant, e.g. we have maximum of 100 elements in each line)
I've read some of the questions posted here in stackoverflow and I also googled it, most of them were for the cases where the arrays are of the same length or the integers are positive or even or they are sorted, is there any way to solve this in general case ?
My solution:
First we sort each line with the use of O(n) sorting algorithm e.g. Counting sort , then we put them into a string and then we use md5 hashing to put them into a hashset. If it's not in the set we put it into that set, if it's already in the list we check the arrays with the same hash value.
Problem with the solution : sorting using the Counting Sort takes a lot of space as there's no limit for the numbers and the collisions are possible .
The problem with using a hashing algorithm on a set of data this large is that you have a high probability of two different lines hashing to the same value. You want to stay in O(n) but I am not sure that is possible, with the size of the data and accuracy needed. If you use heapsort, which is space efficient and then traverse down the new sorted data removing consecutive lines that are the same you could accomplish this in O(nlogn)

Sieve of Eratosthenes (reducing space complexity)

I wanted to generate prime numbers between two given numbers ‘a’ and ‘b’ (b > a). What I did was store Boolean values in an array of size b-1 (that is for numbers 2 to b) and then I applied the sieve method.
Is there a better way, that reduces space complexity, if I don't need all prime numbers from 2 to b?
You need to store all primes which are smaller of equal than the square root of b, then for each number between a and b check whether they are divisible by any of these numbers and they don't equal these numbers. So in our case the magic number is sqrt(b)
You can use segmented sieve of Eratosthenes. The basic idea is pretty simple.
In a typical sieve, we start with a large array of Booleans, all set to the same value. These represent odd numbers, starting from 3. We look at the first and see that it's true, so we add it to the list of prime numbers. Then we mark off every multiple of that number as not prime.
Now, the problem with this is that it's not very cache friendly. As we mark off the multiples of each number, we go through the entire array. Then when we reach the end, we start over from the beginning (which is no longer in the cache) and walk through the entire array again. Each time through the array, we read the entire array from main memory again.
For a segmented sieve, we do things a bit differently. We start by by finding only the primes up to the square root of the limit we care about. Then we use those to mark off primes in the main array. The difference here is the order in which we mark off primes. Instead of marking off all the multiples of three, then all the multiples of 5, and so on, we start by marking off the multiples of three for data that will fit in the cache. Then, instead of continuing on to more data in the array, we go back and mark off the multiples of five for the data that fits in the cache. Then the multiples of 7, and so on.
Then, when we've marked off all the multiples in that cache-sized chunk of data, we move on to the next cache-sized chunk of data. We start over with marking off multiples of 3 in this chunk, then multiples of 5, and so on until we've marked off all the multiples in this chunk. We continue that pattern until we've marked off all the non-prime numbers in all the chunks, and we're done.
So, given N primes below the square root of the limit we care about, a naive sieve will read the entire array of Booleans N times. By contrast, a segmented sieve will only read each chunk of the data once. Once a chunk of data is read from main memory, all the processing on that chunk is done before any more data is read from main memory.
The exact speed-up this gives will depend on the ratio of the speed of cache to the speed of main memory, the size of the array you're using vs. the size of the cache, and so on. Nonetheless, it is generally pretty substantial--for example, on my particular machine, looking for the primes up to 100 million, the segmented sieve has a speed advantage of about 10:1.
One thing you must remember, if you're using C++. A well-known issue with std::vector<bool> is Under C++98/03, vector<bool> was required to be a specialization that stored each Boolean as a single bit with some proxy trickery to get bool-like behavior. That requirement has since been lifted, but many libraries still include it.
With a non-segmented sieve, it's generally a useful trade-off. Although it requires a little extra CPU time to compute masks and such to modify only a single bit at a time, it saves enough bandwidth to main memory to more than compensate.
With a segmented sieve, bandwidth to main memory isn't nearly as large a factor, so using a vector<char> generally seems to give better results (at least with the compilers and processors I have handy).
Getting optimal performance from a segmented sieve does require knowledge of the size of your processor's cache, but getting it precisely correct isn't usually critical--if you assume the size is smaller than it really is, you won't necessarily get optimal use of your cache, but you usually won't lose a lot either.

Correlating large matrix

I have a matrix with 100000 columns (variables) and 100 rows (observation).
I need to correlate (pearson) all with all.
I use corrcoef as I found it much faster comparing to corr.
When I take a matrix of 25000 columns the operation takes 15 seconds. However when I increase the size to 50000 after several minutes my matlab RAM increases to 16Gb and matlab (including windows) begins to freeze. Any suggestions? Any patent for splitting? Calculating column by columns turns as extremely inefficient...
Thanks for help,
Vadim
Brute force calculation of such a large array is impossible without a 64 bit version of matlab plus enough memory to store that large array, or storing the array in some other way. You can store the array offline, only bringing in what you need as you use it.
Additionally, if these numbers will always be small integers, then use uint8 or int8, or a logical array, even a single array, all of which will reduce the memory requirements compared to double arrays. Even better if the array is sparse, then use sparse array operations.
An alternative is to use the Parallel Computing Toolbox (and the MATLAB Distributed Computing Server) to harness the memory of several machines simultaneously. This would allow you to write:
matlabpool open <a large number>
x = distributed.zeros( 100000, 100 );
See also this thread for dealing with big matrices...

Choosing a minimum hash size for a given allowable number of collisions

I am parsing a large amount of network trace data. I want to split the trace into chunks, hash each chunk, and store a sequence of the resulting hashes rather than the original chunks. The purpose of my work is to identify identical chunks of data - I'm hashing the original chunks to reduce the data set size for later analysis. It is acceptable in my work that we trade off the possibility that collisions occasionally occur in order to reduce the hash size (e.g. 40 bit hash with 1% misidentification of identical chunks might beat 60 bit hash with 0.001% misidentification).
My question is, given a) number of chunks to be hashed and b) allowable percentage of misidentification, how can one go about choosing an appropriate hash size?
As an example:
1,000,000 chunks to be hashed, and we're prepared to have 1% misidentification (1% of hashed chunks appear identical when they are not identical in the original data). How do we choose a hash with the minimal number of bits that satisifies this?
I have looked at materials regarding the Birthday Paradox, though this is concerned specifically with the probability of a single collision. I have also looked at materials which discuss choosing a size based on an acceptable probability of a single collision, but have not been able to extrapolate from this how to choose a size based on an acceptable probability of n (or fewer) collisions.
Obviously, the quality of your hash function matters, but some easy probability theory will probably help you here.
The question is what exactly are you willing to accept, is it good enough that you have an expected number of collisions at only 1% of the data? Or, do you demand that the probability of the number of collisions going over some bound be something? If its the first, then back of the envelope style calculation will do:
Expected number of pairs that hash to the same thing out of your set is (1,000,000 C 2)*P(any two are a pair). Lets assume that second number is 1/d where d is the the size of the hashtable. (Note: expectations are linear, so I'm not cheating very much so far). Now, you say you want 1% collisions, so that is 10000 total. Well, you have (1,000,000 C 2)/d = 10,000, so d = (1,000,000 C 2)/10,000 which is according to google about 50,000,000.
So, you need a 50 million ish possible hash values. That is a less than 2^26, so you will get your desired performance with somewhere around 26 bits of hash (depending on quality of hashing algorithm). I probably have a factor of 2 mistake in there somewhere, so you know, its rough.
If this is an offline task, you cant be that space constrained.
Sounds like a fun exercise!
Someone else might have a better answer, but I'd go the brute force route, provided that there's ample time:
Run the hashing calculation using incremental hash size and record the collision percentage for each hash size.
You might want to use binary search to reduce the search space.

Where do I find the memory requirements of a MATLAB function?

I have a 3D array of values (0 or 1), which is very large (approx 2300x2300x11). I want to fit a surface to these values using for example interp3, but when I try MATLAB runs out of memory. Thus, I've decided to reduce the size of my array enough for MATLAB to accomodate it in memory.
Now, the smaller I make the reduced array, the worse my results will be (the surface fitting is part of a measurement process with high precision requirements), so I want to reduce the array as little as possible.
Is there any way to determine on beforehand how much memory a certain array size will demand and how much memory is available, and then use this information to resize the array enough to avoid out of memory exceptions, but not more?
I don't know the answer to this, but I wonder if you can have your cake and eat it, too.
If your data set is too big, why not do a piecewise fit? Do it in chunks rather than omitting data points.
Or be smarter about how you omit data points. You want them in areas of high curvature - where your data is changing fastest. Leave out points in areas far away from the action, where nothing interesting is happening. You might have to do a fit, look at the surface, add and remove more points and try again.
It might an iterative process, but I'll bet you'll be able to get a nice fit with a little luck and effort.
You can look at the maximum array sizes that are supported on different platforms. In general, if you have a PxQxR sized 3D array of doubles, then the size of your array in bytes is P*Q*R*8. For your matrix, the size is ~ 444 MB. You can also try reducing it to a single, using single(A). single uses 4 bytes per element and you can reduce the size of your array by a factor 2.
I haven't really poked into the inner workings of interp3, but the exact memory requirements will depend on the interpolation option you choose. So, you can first try to convert it to single and see if it works. If not, try with 80% (90%) of the number of rows and columns. This way you have a good chunk of the original array, but the memory requirement is only 64% (81%) of the original.
If that doesn't help, duffymo's suggestion is what you should be looking into.