If collisions are possible in hash tables, what causes them, and how can they be avoided? If it's all right with you, I'd want to provide an example to clarify.

A collision in computer science refers to a situation where multiple values or objects are mapped to the same location or slot in a data structure, such as an array, hash table, or graph.

For example, in a hash table, a collision occurs when two or more keys have the same hash value, leading to multiple keys being stored in the same slot in the table. This can lead to reduced performance and incorrect results if the hash table is not designed to handle collisions properly.

Collisions can occur for various reasons, such as poor design of the hash function used to map keys to indices in the hash table, a high load factor (ratio of the number of keys to the number of slots), or a small size of the hash table. To avoid collisions in hash tables, various strategies can be used, such as a well-designed hash function, resizing the hash table, or chaining.