This discussion explores the effectiveness of simulated annealing compared to random search for optimizing a set of 16 integer parameters. The author seeks to determine if simulated annealing provides a significant advantage over random search, despite the parameter space being too large for exhaustive search. Responses suggest plotting performance over time and highlight the ability of simulated annealing to escape local optima as its main strength.
In this paper, we revisit one of the simplest problems in data structures: the task of inserting elements into an open-addressed hash table so that elements can later be retrieved with as few probes as possible. We show that, even without reordering elements over time, it is possible to construct a hash table that achieves far better expected search complexities (both amortized and worst-case) than were previously thought possible. Along the way, we disprove the central conjecture left by Yao in his seminal paper 'Uniform Hashing is Optimal'. All of our results come with matching lower bounds.
