Re: [HACKERS] Bad n_distinct estimation; hacks suggested?

Tom Lane wrote:

>Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:
>
>
>>Overall, our formula is inherently conservative of n_distinct.   That is, I
>>believe that it is actually computing the *smallest* number of distinct
>>values which would reasonably produce the given sample, rather than the
>>*median* one.  This is contrary to the notes in analyze.c, which seem to
>>think that we're *overestimating* n_distinct.
>>
>>
>
>Well, the notes are there because the early tests I ran on that formula
>did show it overestimating n_distinct more often than not.  Greg is
>correct that this is inherently a hard problem :-(
>
>I have nothing against adopting a different formula, if you can find
>something with a comparable amount of math behind it ... but I fear
>it'd only shift the failure cases around.
>
>
>
>

The math in the paper does not seem to look at very low levels of q (=
sample to pop ratio).

The formula has a range of [d,N]. It appears intuitively (i.e. I have
not done any analysis) that at very low levels of q, as f1 moves down
from n, the formula moves down from N towards d very rapidly. I did a
test based on the l_comments field in a TPC lineitems table. The test
set has N = 6001215, D =  2921877. In my random sample of 1000 I got d =
976 and f1 = 961, for a DUJ1 figure of 24923, which is too low by 2
orders of magnitude.

I wonder if this paper has anything that might help:
http://www.stat.washington.edu/www/research/reports/1999/tr355.ps - if I
were more of a statistician I might be able to answer :-)

cheers

andrew