Estimation method and device for elements in distributed environment

The invention discloses a method and a device for estimating elements in a distributed environment. The method comprises the following steps of: respectively extracting a sample from each node; the nodes are distributed databases; performing frequency statistics on each sample to obtain a data dictionary; maintaining at least two data abstracts on each node, wherein the data abstracts comprise data frequency characteristics obtained based on the data dictionary; the data frequency characteristics represent the characteristics of elements in the sample; the data abstract in each node is sent to a main node, the main node combines the data abstracts in all the nodes to obtain a first data abstract, and the element is estimated based on the first data abstract, so that the problems that the data scale is too large and the communication cost between machines is too large in a distributed environment can be avoided; therefore, the efficiency of estimating the number of the elements in the distributed environment i