Developer Transformation Guide

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Hamming Distance

Use the Hamming Distance algorithm when the position of the data characters is a critical factor, for example in numeric or code fields such as telephone numbers, ZIP Codes, or product codes.

The Hamming Distance algorithm calculates a match score for two data strings by computing the number of positions in which characters differ between the data strings. For strings of different length, each additional character in the longest string is counted as a difference between the strings.

Hamming Distance Example

Consider the following strings:

Morlow

M
a
rlow
es

The highlighted characters indicate the positions that the Hamming algorithm identifies as different.

To calculate the Hamming match score, the transformation divides the number of matching characters (5) by the length of the longest string (8). In this example, the strings are 62.5% similar and the match score is

0.625

Field Matching Strategies

Field Match Algorithms

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