Abstract: A two-phase process quickly and accurately identifies representations of the same items within a collection of item representations. In the first phase, referred to as a “blocking phase,” frequency information indicating the frequency with which terms appear within the collection of item representations is used to quickly identify “candidate pairs” (i.e., pairs of item representations that have a relatively high probability of matching). The blocking phase results in a reduced subset of the data for further analysis during the second phase. In the second phase, referred to as a “matching phase,” the candidate pairs are analyzed using fuzzy matching functions to accurately identify “matching pairs” (i.e., representations of the same items).

Abstract: A two-phase process quickly and accurately identifies representations of the same items within a collection of item representations. In the first phase, referred to as a “blocking phase,” frequency information indicating the frequency with which terms appear within the collection of item representations is used to quickly identify “candidate pairs” (i.e., pairs of item representations that have a relatively high probability of matching). The blocking phase results in a reduced subset of the data for further analysis during the second phase. In the second phase, referred to as a “matching phase,” the candidate pairs are analyzed using fuzzy matching functions to accurately identify “matching pairs” (i.e., representations of the same items).