Finding maximum in a Hashtable

[humor_me]

Given an Hashtable, is there a way of finding the maximum element in the hashtable in less than O(n) in the worst case where n is the total number of elements in the Hashtable? In other words, is there a way of finding such an element by means other than doing a linear search?

HM

[D_Drmmr]

A hashtable is unordered, so there is no way to do it faster than O(n).

[becga]

Depends on the function used for hashing. Also depends on the no of digits of the integers we are using. Typically - a radix sort uses this. Worst case is still O(kN) but think of the best case.