Posts

Building a general entity matcher requires more than one dataset - 3

Image
Entity resolution decides whether two listings from different sources describe the same real-world business. The listings share no key, and their names and addresses rarely match letter for letter. The same problem turns up in customer master data, supplier deduplication, provider directories and fraud detection. entitopia is an open-source project for this kind of matching on Elasticsearch. It keeps everything specific to a dataset in JSON configuration. One sample project reads the US register of motor carriers, about 2.1 million companies. It looks for carriers that a regulator shut down and that may have reopened under a new name. A second sample project looks for duplicate listings among 5,419 Medicare hospitals. Use Elasticsearch to match businesses measures how to compare each field. Tuning an entity matcher measures what the candidate search and the ignored values let the scorer see. This article covers what it took to run the same matche...

Tuning an entity matcher: fix the candidate search before the weights - 2

Image
An entity matcher decides whether two listings describe the same real-world business. Once it runs, it produces a list of likely pairs, and someone notices a match it missed. The usual response is to lower the threshold or change the weights. Neither helps when the missing listing never reached the scorer. entitopia is an open-source project for this kind of matching on Elasticsearch. One of its sample projects reads the US register of motor carriers, about 2.1 million companies. It looks for carriers that a regulator shut down and that may have reopened under a new name. Another looks for duplicate listings among 5,419 Medicare hospitals. The carrier matcher runs in two stages: A candidate search fetches up to 500 listings that might be the same business as each shut-down carrier. A Python scorer compares each candidate with the shut-down carrier field by field and combines the results into one pair score. The settings that c...

Use Elasticsearch to Match Organizations and people when the Data differs Deliberately or Accidentally - 1

Image
Entity resolution determines whether two listings in your systems are the same real-world business. Two things make it hard: data quality and human ingenuity. A sales team finds the same customer on two accounts: QUILLBY FREIGHT LLC on one and QUILBY FREIGHT INC on the other. Both sit at the same street, written two ways. A buyer's vendor list carries one supplier three times. A regulator wants to know whether a trucking company it shut down has reopened under a new name. That company may be working to avoid detection. Either way, the names and addresses rarely match letter for letter. entitopia is an open-source project for this kind of entity resolution on Elasticsearch. Two sample projects test the idea on public data. One reads the US register of motor carriers, about 2.1 million companies, and looks for carriers that reopened under a new identity. The other reads the Medicare list of 5,419 hospitals and looks for duplicate listings. Both pro...

Pimoroni Badger 2350 as a Badgeware E-Ink Mood Display

Image
Badger 2350 Mood Display Mood Badger is a visual communication aid for neurodivergent children. It turns a Pimoroni Badger 2350 e-ink badge into a mood display: the child presses a button to show how they feel, with a picture and a word, so they can share their emotional state without having to say it. The e-ink screen keeps showing the mood even while the badge is asleep. MoodBadger 2350 is a port of MoodBadger by Simon Painter, written for the original Badger 2040. Three Mood Sets Three mood sets are included in the application: Faces, Thumbs, Weather.  These are the same three mood sets that are included in MoodBadger for the 2040 Controls Badger 2350 devices come with User Buttons.  Three are laid out across the bottom labeled A, B, and C. They are often used as selectors or navigation. Two buttons are along the right-hand side. They are often used as up and down or scroll buttons. The right-hand ...