On: Computer scientists invent an efficient new way to...

[devnonymous]

Not sure which Knuth paper you're referring to but skimming through the article my understanding is this algorithm works /only/ if the values are hashable. IOW how else does one define unique/distinct values ?

[hcs → devnonymous]

https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/papers/cvm-note.pdf

Looks like it was posted at the time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36079213 but not much discussed. I found it over here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40387594

[112233 → devnonymous]

https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/papers/cvm-note.pdf

note how "u"s are selected every time value is not in a list. I don't read it as being a hash.

[hcs → 112233]

I think the analysis relies on independent random "u"s, even for the same key.