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Literally, a pigeonhole is a small hole in a loft, the nesting-place of a pigeon. This has led to two metaphorical uses:

The term pigeonholing is used to describe processes which attempt to classify disparate entities into a small number of mutually exclusive categories, named for the idea that each pigeon must go into a pigeonhole, but can only be in one hole at a time.
The pigeonhole principle is a mathematical principle based on the observation that when there are more pigeons than pigeonholes, two pigeons must end up in the same hole.

A 'pigeonhole' can also be a small compartment for holding papers.

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Topics: Pigeonhole Sort, Pigeonhole Principle, Pigeonhole...

Pigeonhole sortPigeonhole sorting takes linear time ( O n ), which is the best possible performance for a sort algorithm since one must inevitably look at each of the elements being sorted at least once, regardless of the sorting algorithm. However, it requires that no

Pigeonhole principleCombinatorics The pigeonhole principle states that if n pigeons are put into m pigeonholes, and if n > m then at least one pigeonhole must contain more than one pigeon. Another way of stating this would be that m holes can hold at most m objects with one

PigeonholeLiterally, a pigeonhole is a small hole in a loft, the nesting-place of a pigeon. This has led to two metaphorical uses: The term pigeonholing is used to describe processes which attempt to classify disparate entities into a small number of mutually exclu

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