
needle in a haystack problem
The "needle in a haystack" problem describes a situation where someone is searching for a small, specific item (the needle) within a large, cluttered environment (the haystack). It illustrates the challenge of finding a tiny, precise piece of information or object amid a vast amount of similar, everyday data or material. In computational terms, it highlights the difficulty of locating a particular data point or pattern efficiently within a large dataset, often requiring specialized algorithms or methods to improve search speed and accuracy.