On the cost of fixed partial match queries in K-d trees

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00453-015-0097-4Partial match queries constitute the most basic type of associative queries in multidimensional data structures such as K-d trees or quadtrees. Given a query q=(q0,…,qK-1) where s of the coordinates are specified and K-s are left unspecified (qi=*), a partial match search returns the subset of data points x=(x0,…,xK-1) in the data structure that match the given query, that is, the data points such that xi=qi whenever qi¿*. There exists a wealth of results about the cost of partial match searches in many different multidimensional data structures, but most of these results deal with random queries. Only recently a few papers have begun to investigate the cost of partial match queries with a fixed query q. This paper represents a new contribution in this direction, giving a detailed asymptotic estimate of the expected cost Pn,q for a given fixed query q. From previous results on the cost of partial matches with a fixed query and the ones presented here, a deeper understanding is emerging, uncovering the following functional shape for Pn,q Pn,q=¿·(¿i:qi is specifiedqi(1-qi))a/2·na+l.o.t. (l.o.t. lower order terms, throughout this work) in many multidimensional data structures, which differ only in the exponent a and the constant ¿, both dependent on s and K, and, for some data structures, on the whole pattern of specified and unspecified coordinates in q as well. Although it is tempting to conjecture that this functional shape is “universal”, we have shown experimentally that it seems not to be true for a variant of K-d trees called squarish K-d trees.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft