README.md

morris_counter

Probabilistic Morris Counter (counts 2^n using e.g. just a byte)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximate_counting_algorithm

Probabilistically updating counter, uses a tiny amount of RAM (1 byte by default in this implementation) to count to 2^2^bits (2^2^8 == 1e77)

The constructor will take other type codes (e.g. b'I' for 4 bytes on 64 bit systems).

The counter uses array.array so it can hold a large set of counters, see second example below.

Usage:

import morris_counter
mc = morris_counter.MorrisCounter()
print mc.get()  # 1
mc.add()
print mc.get()  # 2
mc.add()
print mc.get()  # 4 or maybe still 2
mc.add()
print mc.get()  # 4 or maybe still 2 or maybe higher
mc.add()
print mc.get()  # 8 (or 2 or 4 or more)
_ = [mc.add() for n in xrange(1000)]  # add another 1000
print mc.get()  # 1024 (or more or less by a power of 2, but roughly 1024)

mc = morris_counter.MorrisCounter()
mc.add_counter()
mc.add()  # add to 0th counter
mc.add(1)  # add to 1st counter
print mc.get(1)  # get from 1st counter

_ = [mc.add(1) for n in xrange(100000)]  # add 100,000
print mc.get(1)  # 65536 (or greater/lesser by powers of 2)

Tests:

If you have nose installed then:

$ nosetests
...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 3 tests in 0.003s

OK