Analysis of Chaining

Let the load factor $\alpha$ be calculated as number of keys stored / number of slots = n/m. For our earlier example, .

$\alpha$ represents the expected length l of the chain.

The performance of Search is relative to the performance of the hash function computation and the length of the chain, or , both for successful and unsuccessful searches.

Thus, if m is proportional to n, then $\alpha$ is a constant, and all operations are $\Theta(1)$.