In this post, we're going to investigate an underexplored bridge between computer science and algebraic number theory. To motivate it, consider the analogy between floating point arithmetic and the theoretical real numbers. While floating points can only approximate the precision of a real number, much … Continue reading 2-adic Logarithms and Fast Exponentiation

(Or: Enforced Algebraic Structure of Commutative Accumulative Hash Functions) While there are several documented approaches to defining a hash function for lists and other containers where iteration order is guaranteed, there seems to be less discussion around best practices for defining a hash function for … Continue reading Hashing Unordered Sets: How Far Will Cleverness Take You?