Techniques for efficient query processing

Described herein are a system and techniques for increasing the efficiency of generating a result set for a query. In some embodiments, the techniques may involve performing computations on a high-level element, sorting, and selecting a set of the high-level elements, and recursively repeating the process on sub-elements of the set of the high-level elements. The process may be recursively repeated until a specified level of granularity is reached. This may significantly decrease the number of computations that need to be performed, increasing the speed with which queries can be performed. In some embodiments, the process may involve identifying elements which may be highly correlated to optimal computation results and may add those elements to the result set to improve the accuracy of the result set.