Toward Practical Learning-based Frequency Estimation without Ground Truth
Keywords: sketching algorithms, ML for streaming data, frequency estimation
TL;DR: Much more practical frequency estimation algorithms using machine learning, while achieving better performance.
Abstract: Estimating the frequency of items on the high-volume, fast data stream has been extensively studied in many areas, such as database and network measurement. Traditional sketch algorithms only allow to give very rough estimates with limited memory cost, whereas some learning-augmented algorithms have been proposed recently, their offline framework requires actual frequencies that are challenging to access in general for training, and speed is too slow for real-time processing, despite the still coarse-grained accuracy. To this end, we propose a more practical learning-based estimation framework namely UCL-sketch, by following the line of equation-based sketch to estimate per-key frequencies. In a nutshell, there are two key techniques: online training via equivalent learning without ground truth, and highly scalable architecture with logical estimation buckets. We implemented experiments on both real-world and synthetic datasets. The results demonstrate that our method greatly outperforms existing state-of-the-art sketches regarding per-key accuracy and distribution, while preserving resource efficiency. Our code is attached in the supplementary material, and will be made publicly available.
Supplementary Material: zip
Primary Area: other topics in machine learning (i.e., none of the above)
Code Of Ethics: I acknowledge that I and all co-authors of this work have read and commit to adhering to the ICLR Code of Ethics.
Submission Guidelines: I certify that this submission complies with the submission instructions as described on https://iclr.cc/Conferences/2025/AuthorGuide.
Reciprocal Reviewing: I understand the reciprocal reviewing requirement as described on https://iclr.cc/Conferences/2025/CallForPapers. If none of the authors are registered as a reviewer, it may result in a desk rejection at the discretion of the program chairs. To request an exception, please complete this form at https://forms.gle/Huojr6VjkFxiQsUp6.
Anonymous Url: I certify that there is no URL (e.g., github page) that could be used to find authors’ identity.
No Acknowledgement Section: I certify that there is no acknowledgement section in this submission for double blind review.
Submission Number: 596
Loading