Help me understand what to do

[ichabod801]

I'm assuming you know what a hash table is. Open addressing keeps everything on the hash table. Quadratic probing is a way to deal with hash collisions. Note that you are using hash % table size, that reduces the range of possible hashes drastically, so you will often have two different hashes trying to store in the same spot on the table. That's a hash collision. Quadratic probing means you keep trying new hashes (probing) by adding n**2 to the hash (quadratic). So if hash is taken, you try hash + 1, hash + 4, hash + 9, and so on until you find an open slot.

This page has some discussion of the issues and how to implement them.