Patent ID: 8364446

Claim:
A non-transitory computer-accessible memory medium that stores program instructions for approximating a system, wherein the program instructions are executable by a processor to: store a representation of a family of systems in a computer memory, wherein the family of systems comprises models of corresponding real-world systems, wherein the family of systems comprises a family of filters of a specified order, wherein the representation of the family of systems comprises a plurality of parameters, and wherein the parameters comprise one or more of: functional parameters of the models; or representational parameters of the models; determine an embedding of the family of systems into an abstract geometrical space with a metric, wherein the abstract geometrical space is continuous, wherein the abstract geometrical space is defined by the parameters, wherein at least some coordinates of the abstract geometrical space specify values for the parameters of systems of the family of systems, wherein the abstract geometrical space comprises a continuous space of the filters of the specified order, and wherein the abstract geometrical space comprises a grid of discrete points representing respective discrete approximations of systems of the family of systems; determine a first point in the abstract geometrical space corresponding to a desired instance of a system, wherein the coordinates of the first point specify values for the parameters of the desired instance of the system; sample the abstract geometrical space using a mapping of a well-distributed set of points from a Euclidean space of the parameters to the abstract geometrical space, wherein the mapping fairly-maps the Euclidean space to the abstract geometrical space; determine a nearest discrete point to the first point in the abstract geometrical space in accordance with the metric based on said sampling, wherein the nearest discrete point specifies values for parameters for an a substantially optimal discrete approximation of the desired instance of the system within a specified tolerance; and store the specified values for the discrete approximation, wherein the specified values of the parameters are useable to implement the discrete approximation of the desired instance of the system.