Evaluating String Comparator Performance for Record Linkage

Written by:
RRS2005-05

Abstract

We compare variations of string comparators based on the Jaro-Winkler comparator and edit distance comparator. We apply the comparators to Census data to see which are better classifiers for matches and non-matches, first by comparing their classification abilities using a ROC curve based analysis, then by considering a direct comparison between two candidate comparators in record linkage results.

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