Theme
The thread: Space is the other axis — page 3
Page 3 of 3, continuing the same thread in the same order.
The other axis
Half an index is three permutations
A phrase index stores a length, a source and a literal per phrase — and three orderings of its boundaries, at forty-five per cent of the structure. One of the three is the inverse of another, and nothing needs both at once.
What is taught wronglyA constant factor, not a term
The substitution was expected to remove a quantity proportional to the answer. Both traversals hold a quantity proportional to the answer, and what it removes is a factor of 1.6 that shrinks as the collection grows.