Clustering is a statics term that describes the tendency of events to occur around groups and less frequently around other groups. In this case, it is where we are trying to predict (or guess) values to make better use of the hash table storage.
To make it easier to understand, try to guess the first character of a word that I am thinking. Did you guess X or Z? No, because there are very few words that begin with with these letters. On the other hand a larger number of words begin with T and A so these are more likely. The cluster size of T and A is significantly lager than X and Z. You can see the clustering at http://www.ask.com/wiki/Letter_frequency if you scroll down to the graphs. Clustering changes depending upon the situation. E.g. how often a letter occurs in words which is another graph on that web page which you can compare. MVS messages cluster even more. Regards, Jon Perryman. ________________________________ From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Not being a matchamtician, what exactly do you mean by clustering. ---------- Original Message ---------- From: John Gilmore <[email protected]> Long established number-theoretic results then predict clustering of these hash values at the prime divisors of a composite m.
