A METHOD AND A DEVICE FOR FREQUENCY COUNTING

摘要

A memory efficient method and an electronic device for counting frequencies of various events. The structure for storing frequency data comprises primary (204) and secondary (206) storages which contain the frequency data (208, 210, 214) in different levels of detail. The primary storage (204) is a detailed storage comprising both event type and count information units in a fully restorable form. The secondary storage (206) is targeted for more infrequent events with lower level of detail and constructed as an array of count values addressed by a hash function using event type as an input. Another option is to derive a shortened ID from the event type by utilizing a hash function and exploit the ID as an addressing key for the corresponding count. Events are moved between the primary (204) and secondary (206) storages depending on the detected event type frequencies. The invention is utilized in a recommendation engine for grading and sorting bookmarks stored in browsers for accessing the Internet.