26 Jan 2023I recently came across a paper called Distinct Elements in Streams: An Algorithm for the (Text) Book by Chakraborty, Vinodchandran, and Meel. The usage of the phrase “from the book” is of course a reference to Erdős, who often referred to a “book” within which God kept the best proofs of any given theorem. Thus, for something to be “from the book” is for it to be particularly elegant. I have to say, I agree with their assessment. This is an extremely charming little algorithm that I r...