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Count-Min Sketch

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Encyclopedia of Algorithms

Years and Authors of Summarized Original Work

2004; Cormode, Muthukrishnan

Problem Definition

The problem of sketching a large mathematical object is to produce a compact data structure that approximately represents it. The Count-Min (CM) sketch is an example of a sketch that allows a number of related quantities to be estimated with accuracy guarantees, including point queries and dot product queries. Such queries are at the core of many computations, so the structure can be used in order to answer a variety of other queries, such as frequent items (heavy hitters), quantile finding, join size estimation, and more. Since the sketch can process updates in the form of additions or subtractions to dimensions of the vector (which may correspond to insertions or deletions or other transactions), it is capable of working over streams of updates, at high rates.

The data structure maintains the linear projection of the vector with a number of other random vectors. These vectors are defined...

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Recommended Reading

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Correspondence to Graham Cormode Dr. .

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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Cormode, G. (2014). Count-Min Sketch. In: Kao, MY. (eds) Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27848-8_579-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27848-8_579-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27848-8

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