US 11,676,160 B2
Methods and apparatus to estimate cardinality of users represented in arbitrarily distributed bloom filters
Jonathan Sullivan, Hurricane, UT (US); Diane Morovati Lopez, West Hills, CA (US); Christie Summers, Baltimore, MD (US); Jake Ryan Dailey, San Francisco, CA (US); Michael R. Sheppard, Holland, MI (US); and DongBo Cui, Fresh Meadows, NY (US)
Assigned to THE NIELSEN COMPANY (US), LLC, New York, NY (US)
Filed by The Nielsen Company (US), LLC, New York, NY (US)
Filed on Aug. 31, 2020, as Appl. No. 17/7,774.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/975,020, filed on Feb. 11, 2020.
Prior Publication US 2021/0248629 A1, Aug. 12, 2021
Int. Cl. G06Q 30/02 (2012.01); G06N 7/00 (2006.01); G06Q 30/0201 (2023.01); G06N 7/01 (2023.01)
CPC G06Q 30/0201 (2013.01) [G06N 7/01 (2023.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. An apparatus comprising:
a communications interface to:
receive a first Bloom filter array generated by a first computer of a first database proprietor, the first Bloom filter array representative of first users who accessed media, the first users registered with the first database proprietor; and
receive a second Bloom filter array generated by a second computer of a second database proprietor, the second Bloom filter array representative of second users who accessed the media, the second users registered with the second database proprietor; and
a cardinality analyzer to estimate a total number of unique users included in a union of the first users represented in the first Bloom filter array and the second users represented in the second Bloom filter array, the estimation based on the cardinality analyzer numerically solving for a number of users that maximizes a likelihood of producing the union of the first and second users represented in the first and second Bloom filter arrays.