Fast Polynomials
Learning and science
algorithms reference
SHOW HN2026
How HN took it
3 positive, 8 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 4 critical, out of 16 comments about the project. Thread score -0.03.
Performance: 0 for, 3 againstDesign: 1 for, 1 againstIdea: 2 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Interactive demo is useful for learning evaluation methods.
From 1 comment
This is super cool. I learned a lot playing with the demo. I only knew Horner and Estrin, but I think I've gotten a grasp on most of them. One small change I'd recommend is for…
pvillano on HN
Lean proof makes the bound trustworthy.
From 1 comment
The Lean proof is the interesting part. A 100-page construction nobody's sure about becomes something you can trust when the multiplication-count bound is machine-checked.
lee_ward on HN
Objections
Preprocessing cost may outweigh gains for hashing.
From 1 comment
It is applicable, but it is not useful. Universal hashes use the input text as the set of coefficients. This method requires additional preprocessing of the coefficients, before…
adrian_b on HN
Heuristic hashes like xxh3 may still be faster.
From 1 comment
You benchmarked a really old heuristic hash in Murmur and xxh64. xxh3 is ~1.6x to 1.8x faster than xxh64 - extrapolating that to 5.7 in your paper puts it at ~18-27% faster.…
vlovich123 on HN
Requests
Separate source nodes for x, x^2, x^4 in the graph view.
From 1 comment
This is super cool. I learned a lot playing with the demo. I only knew Horner and Estrin, but I think I've gotten a grasp on most of them. One small change I'd recommend is for…
pvillano on HN
Fix the monic toggle that resets when switching methods.
From 1 comment
It keeps flipping back to 'monic' from e.g. 'ln(1+x)' when switching between algorithms, and then seems to lock to 'monic'? (Am I missing something?) Also I am curious, in your…
voxelghost on HN
Questions
Tradeoff between multiplication and addition cost.
From 1 comment
What is the tradeoff between multiplication and addition?
gowld on HN
Why not use FFT for multipoint evaluation.
From 1 comment
If you're going to preprocess the polynomial, maybe you want to evaluate it at many different points. But then why not use the FFT?
throwaway81523 on HN
Alternatives named
Horner's method
From 1 comment
This is super cool. I learned a lot playing with the demo. I only knew Horner and Estrin, but I think I've gotten a grasp on most of them. One small change I'd recommend is for…
pvillano on HN
Estrin's method
From 1 comment
If you are working over floating point, you probably with to use Estrin's method (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrin%27s_scheme - also tab 3 on the website.) It takes…
thomasahle on HN
Rabin-Winograd
From 1 comment
Thank you! It was a lot of fun to make the website and see all the methods in practice after having just looked at the theory for a long time :D > have a separate source node for…
thomasahle on HN
xxh3 and wyhash
From 1 comment
Would this be applicable to fast hashes like WyHash and xxh3 or are those not using polynomials? Is this mainly for faster cryptographic hashes?
vlovich123 on HN