Obtaining Medians and Other Quantiles with Limited Memory Space.

摘要

This paper provides some basic methodologies for determining medians and other quantiles of data. They are applicable to data more numerous than conventional techniques can manage efficiently. The origins of the work are in ionospheric propagation assessment, but the results are generally applicable. Because these problems push computing facilities to their limit, the final implementation depends on the available facilities. Thus a complete solution cannot be presented, although important factors and techniques have been identified and potential effort savings estimated.