[fennecfoxen]

Now we just need HyperLogLog by example.

(HyperLogLogs are vaguely similar data structures in that you hash things a bunch to store a value inside, except instead of set-membership inquiries, they're better at cardinality-estimation purposes.)

[dmunoz]

Not in the style of the submitted article, but HyperLogLog was mentioned [0] last year on Nick's Blogs Damn Cool Algortihms series [1]. Discussion on HN [2].

[0] http://blog.notdot.net/2012/09/Dam-Cool-Algorithms-Cardinali...

[1] http://blog.notdot.net/tag/damn-cool-algorithms

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4488946

[abolibibelot]

Well, there you are: a nice explanation of HyperLogLog, along with graphs, and a javascript demo to play with. And a tribute to Philippe Flajolet who came up with the algorithm.

http://blog.aggregateknowledge.com/2012/10/25/sketch-of-the-...

The Aggregate Knowledge blog is mind blowing for everything sketch related.

[llimllib]

Is that demo widget custom, or did they use a tool to generate it? Do you know?

[abolibibelot]

According to this comment http://blog.aggregateknowledge.com/2012/10/25/sketch-of-the-... , it's custom made and based on d3.

[llimllib]

It would make the world a lot better if somebody made it easy to create that widget in IPython Notebook or some similar tool.

#IShouldDoThatButIProbablyWont

[llimllib]

I hope you write it! I also imagine an encyclopedia of many different algorithm examples, each with demonstrations and graphical explanations. Bret Victor has talked about that sort of thing, and it greatly intrigues me.

[dmunoz]

I'm not sure what Bret Victor had in mind, but the second part of Skiena's text The Algorithm Design Manual already does a good job at this. Similar write ups are available online [0], in less detail than the text, e.g. [1]. They all open with a pictorial representation of possible input and corresponding output to aid in scanning when you have a problem to solve. There is also the Encyclopedia of Algorithms [2], and the NIST Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures [3], history of at [4].

[0] http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/

[1] http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/files/dictionaries.shtml

[2] https://www.springer.com/computer/theoretical+computer+scien...

[3] http://xlinux.nist.gov/dads/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_Algorithms_and_D...