System and method for finding top N pairs in a map-reduce setup

摘要

According to an example embodiment, a special purpose computing apparatus includes, but is not limited to, one or more processors programmed with instructions to, based at least in part, on one or more signals representative of a plurality of splits defined by a map process that implements a signature function, compute a density value for at least one of the plurality of splits, where the density value is representative of an expected contribution of the at least one split to a top N key/value pairs of a data set, the data set comprising the key/value pairs.