Patent ID: 7743003

Claim:
A method, performed by one or more computer devices, for approximate counting, comprising: identifying, by one or more processors of the one or more computer devices, a feature of a plurality of features in a repository; performing, by one or more processors of the one or more computer devices, a plurality of different hash functions on a feature name associated with the feature to generate a corresponding plurality of different hash values; identifying, by one or more processors of the one or more computer devices, buckets, of a plurality of buckets in a memory, based on the plurality of different hash values; reading, by one or more processors of the one or more computer devices, a statistical value from each of the identified buckets; updating, by one or more processors of the one or more computer devices, each of the statistical values by subjecting each of the statistical values to a particular function to generate updated statistical values; writing, by one or more processors of the one or more computer devices, each of the updated statistical values into a corresponding one of the identified buckets; and generating, by one or more processors of the one or more computer devices, rules for a model based on the statistical values, including the updated statistical values, in the plurality of buckets.