1. A computer implemented system comprising the following computer executable components: a memory; a processor that executes the following software components; a sampling component that employs sketches to facilitate generation of contingency tables and forms a sample of data; and an estimation component that employs a probabilistic argument to locate a most likely contingency table for the sample; wherein the contingency tables comprise a sample intersection cell (a s ) that is equal to an intersection cell (a) multiplied by a sampling rate (s); wherein the processor finds and outputs to a computer display, estimates on word pair associations in searching document lists on a computer; and wherein the sketches employed to facilitate generation of the contingency tables comprise sketches K 1 , K 2 , and D s = min ⁢ ⁢ { K 1 ⁢ ( k 1 ) , K 2 ⁢ ( k 2 ) } , ⁢ k 1 ′ = k 1 -  { j : K 1 ⁢ ( j ) > D s }  , ⁢ k 2 ′ = k 2 -  { j : K 2 ⁢ ( j ) > D s }  , ⁢ a s =  K 1 ⋂ K 2  , ⁢ b s = k 1 ′ - a s , ⁢ c s = k 2 ′ - a s , ⁢ d s = D s - a s - b s - c s. wherein the most likely contingency table is determined via defining a maximum likelihood estimation as P ⁡ ( a s , b s , c s ⁢ , d s | D s ; a , r ) = ( a a s ) ⁢ ( b b s ) ⁢ ( c c s ) ⁢ ( d d s ) ( a + b + c + d a s + b s + c s + d s ) = ( a a s ) ⁢ ( f 1 - a b s ) ⁢ ( f 2 - a c s ) ⁢ ( D - f 1 - f 2 + a d s ) ( D D s ). and a closed form solution is presented in the form of a ^ MLE , a = f ⁢ 1 ⁡ ( 2 ⁢ a ⁢ s + c ⁢ s ) + f ⁢ 2 ⁢ ( 2 ⁢ a ⁢ s + b ⁢ s ) - ( ⁢ f ⁢ 1 ⁢ ( 2 ⁢ ⁢ a ⁢ s + c ⁢ s ) - f 2 ⁡ ( 2 ⁢ a s + b s ) ) 2 + 4 ⁢ f 1 ⁢ f 2 ⁢ b s ⁢ c s 2 ⁢ ( 2 ⁢ a s + b s + c s ) .