Expected number of uniformly distributed balls in a most loaded bin using placement with simple linear functions

Abstract

We estimate the size of a most loaded bin in the setting when the balls are placed into the bins using a random linear function in a finite field. The balls are chosen from a transformed interval. We show that in this setting the expected load of the most loaded bins is constant. This is an interesting fact because using fully random hash functions with the same class of input sets leads to an expectation of $\Theta\left(\frac{\log m}{\log \log m}\right)$ balls in most loaded bins where $m$ is the number of balls and bins. Although the family of the functions is quite common the size of largest bins was not known even in this simple case.