- J. Bentley, M. Shamos. 1978. A Problem in Multivariate Statistics: Algorithm, Data Structure and Applications.. Abstract: Abstract : Problems and applications are investigated which are associated with computing the empirical cumulative distribution function of N points in k-dimensional space and a multidimensional divide-and-conquer technique is employed that gives rise to a compact data structure for geometric and statistical search problems. A large number of important statistical quantities are computed much faster than was previously possible.
