Sparse <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-adic data coding for computationally efficient and effective big data analytics

We develop the theory and practical implementation of p-adic sparse coding of data. Rather than the standard, sparsifying criterion that uses the L ₀ pseudo-norm, we use the p-adic norm.We require that the hierarchy or tree be node-ranked, as is standard practice in agglomerative and other hierarchical clustering, but not necessarily with decision trees. In order to structure the data, all computational processing operations are direct reading of the data, or are bounded by a constant number of direct readings of the data, implying linear computational time. Through p-adic sparse data coding, efficient storage results, and for bounded p-adic norm stored data, search and retrieval are constant time operations. Examples show the effectiveness of this new approach to content-driven encoding and displaying of data.