Abstract
Given a relative rank r ∈ (0,1) (e.g., r = 1/2 refers to the median), we show how to efficiently sample with high probability an element with rank very close to r from any probability distribution that supports efficient sampling (e.g., elements stored in an array). A primary feature of our methods is their elegance and ease of implementation – they can be coded in less space than is occupied by this abstract, and their lightweight footprint makes them ideally suited for highly resource-constrained computing environments. We demonstrate through empirical testing that these methods perform well in practice, and provide a complete theoretical analysis for our methods that offers valuable insight into the performance of a natural class of approximate selection algorithms based on hierarchical random sampling.
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Dean, B.C., Jalasutram, R., Waters, C. (2014). Lightweight Approximate Selection. In: Schulz, A.S., Wagner, D. (eds) Algorithms - ESA 2014. ESA 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8737. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44777-2_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44777-2_26
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