# Rolling median algorithm in C

### Question

I am currently working on an algorithm to implement a rolling median filter (analogous to a rolling mean filter) in C. From my search of the literature, there appear to be two reasonably efficient ways to do it. The first is to sort the initial window of values, then perform a binary search to insert the new value and remove the existing one at each iteration.

The second (from Hardle and Steiger, 1995, JRSS-C, Algorithm 296) builds a double-ended heap structure, with a maxheap on one end, a minheap on the other, and the median in the middle. This yields a linear-time algorithm instead of one that is O(n log n).

Here is my problem: implementing the former is doable, but I need to run this on millions of time series, so efficiency matters a lot. The latter is proving very difficult to implement. I found code in the Trunmed.c file of the code for the stats package of R, but it is rather indecipherable.

Does anyone know of a well-written C implementation for the linear time rolling median algorithm?

1
108
7/13/2017 9:25:36 PM

I have looked at R's src/library/stats/src/Trunmed.c a few times as I wanted something similar too in a standalone C++ class / C subroutine. Note that this are actually two implementations in one, see src/library/stats/man/runmed.Rd (the source of the help file) which says

\details{
Apart from the end values, the result \code{y = runmed(x, k)} simply has
\code{y[j] = median(x[(j-k2):(j+k2)])} (k = 2*k2+1), computed very
efficiently.

The two algorithms are internally entirely different:
\describe{
\item{"Turlach"}{is the Härdle-Steiger
algorithm (see Ref.) as implemented by Berwin Turlach.
A tree algorithm is used, ensuring performance \eqn{O(n \log
k)}{O(n * log(k))} where \code{n <- length(x)} which is
asymptotically optimal.}
\item{"Stuetzle"}{is the (older) Stuetzle-Friedman implementation
which makes use of median \emph{updating} when one observation
enters and one leaves the smoothing window.  While this performs as
\eqn{O(n \times k)}{O(n * k)} which is slower asymptotically, it is
considerably faster for small \eqn{k} or \eqn{n}.}
}
}


It would be nice to see this re-used in a more standalone fashion. Are you volunteering? I can help with some of the R bits.

Edit 1: Besides the link to the older version of Trunmed.c above, here are current SVN copies of

Edit 2: Ryan Tibshirani has some C and Fortran code on fast median binning which may be a suitable starting point for a windowed approach.

25
12/12/2014 5:05:21 PM