title: Finding items in an universal hash table?
body: <p>If items are organized randomly, how does the table know where to start looking?</p>
  
  <p>In a non-random table items are organized according to some characteristic. (i.e. name). So if the table needs to look up some arbitrary information about "John", it can start looking in the 'J' bucket. </p>
  
  <p>In a universal hash table though, items are arranged randomly. There's no defining characteristic. Therefore to find some arbitrary info about "John", wouldn't the table have to look through every bucket?</p>
  
  <p>Isn't that a huge waste of time? It's like looking through every cabinet in your house to find a spoon. </p>