  Random column sampling is not guaranteed to yield data sketches that preserve
the underlying structures of the data and may not sample sufficiently from
less-populated data clusters. Also, adaptive sampling can often provide
accurate low rank approximations, yet may fall short of producing descriptive
data sketches, especially when the cluster centers are linearly dependent.
Motivated by that, this paper introduces a novel randomized column sampling
tool dubbed Spatial Random Sampling (SRS), in which data points are sampled
based on their proximity to randomly sampled points on the unit sphere. The
most compelling feature of SRS is that the corresponding probability of
sampling from a given data cluster is proportional to the surface area the
cluster occupies on the unit sphere, independently from the size of the cluster
population. Although it is fully randomized, SRS is shown to provide
descriptive and balanced data representations. The proposed idea addresses a
pressing need in data science and holds potential to inspire many novel
approaches for analysis of big data.
