Flexible approximate counting
Scott A. Mitchell, David Day · 2011
Approximate counting [18] is useful for data stream and database summarization. It can help in many settings that allow only one pass over the data, want low memory usage, and can accept some relative error. Approximate counters use fewer bits; we focus on 8-bits but our results are general. These small counters represent a sparse sequence of larger numbers. Counters are incremented probabilistically based on the spacing between the numbers they represent. Our contributions are a customized distribution of counter values and efficient strategies for deciding when to increment them.