Method and system for extended bitmap indexing

A system and method for enhancing bitmap indexing representation of a dataset, which comprises a plurality of cases and features, each case characterized by one or more values of each feature. Currently, the bins vector for each case in the dataset, is a binary array, which is a bitmap indexing representation of each respective feature of the case. The system and method enhance the bitmap indexing by padding each bins vector. The padding is carried out by identifying all target bit locations with a ‘1’ value and replacing at least one ‘0’ bit adjacent to a target bit location with a non-zero numerical value, thereby creating a padded bitmap index. The padding factor may be based on any mathematical or statistical factor concerning population or subpopulation relevant to each of the features of the dataset.