DASCA Data Scientist SDS Question # 23 Topic 3 Discussion

Amortized performance refers to averaging the cost of operations over a sequence of actions, ensuring that while some operations may be costly, the overall average time per operation remains efficient.

Python Dictionaries (Option B): Implemented using hash tables. Insertions, deletions, and lookups typically run in O(1) average time, but occasionally require rehashing (costly). The high cost of rehashing is spread over many operations, giving amortized constant-time performance.

Option A (Hadoop dictionaries): Not standard terminology.

Option C (HDFS dictionaries): HDFS doesn’t use dictionary structures in this sense.

Option D (MapReduce dictionaries): MapReduce uses key-value pairs, but amortized dictionary performance is not its focus.

Thus, the correct answer is Option B (Python dictionaries).