For a set of n points in ℜd, and parameters k and \eps, we present
a data structure that answers (1+\eps,k)-\ANN queries in logarithmic time.
Surprisingly, the space used by the data-structure is \Otilde (n /k); that
is, the space used is sublinear in the input size if k is sufficiently large.
Our approach provides a novel way to summarize geometric data, such that
meaningful proximity queries on the data can be carried out using this sketch.
Using this, we provide a sublinear space data-structure that can estimate the
density of a point set under various measures, including:
\begin{inparaenum}[(i)]
\item sum of distances of k closest points to the query point, and
\item sum of squared distances of k closest points to the query point.
\end{inparaenum}
Our approach generalizes to other distance based estimation of densities of
similar flavor. We also study the problem of approximating some of these
quantities when using sampling. In particular, we show that a sample of size
\Otilde (n /k) is sufficient, in some restricted cases, to estimate the above
quantities. Remarkably, the sample size has only linear dependency on the
dimension