A Bloom filter, conceived by Burton Howard Bloom in 1970, is a space-efficient probabilistic data structure that is used to test whether an element is a member of a set. False positive retrieval results are possible, but false negatives are not; i.e. a query returns either "inside set (may be wrong)" or "definitely not in set". Elements can be added to the set, but not removed (though this can be addressed with a counting filter). The more elements that are added to the set, the larger the probability of false positives.
Read more about Bloom Filter: Algorithm Description, Space and Time Advantages, Probability of False Positives, Interesting Properties, Examples, Alternatives
Famous quotes containing the word bloom:
“The dog barks, the caravan passes on.
The words had a sort of bloom on them
But were weightless, carrying past what was being said.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)