A Comparison of String Distance Metrics for Name-Matching Tasks

Using an open-source, Java toolkit of name-matching methods, we experimentally compare string distance metrics on the task of matching entity names. We investigate a number of different metrics proposed by different communities, including edit-distance metrics, fast heuristic string comparators , token-based distance metrics, and hybrid methods. Overall, the best-performing method is a hybrid scheme combining a TFIDF weighting scheme, which is widely used in information retrieval, with the Jaro-Winkler string-distance scheme, which was developed in the probabilistic record linkage community.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: IJCAI
• Authors: William W. Cohen, Pradeep D. Ravikumar, Stephen E. Fienberg
• Keywords: Distance Metrics, Heuristic String Comparators, IJCAI 2003, IJCAI 2007, Token-based Distance Metrics