How to return multiple matches about fastlink HOT 2 CLOSED

Hi @msghankinson,

I would suggest playing with the cut.a option from fastLink. The option allows you to move the threshold for the agreement in the string-valued variables. In the code below, I moved it to 0.92. Note by default it is set at 0.94. Why do you want to lower the threshold? To capture nicknames. However, I would not recommend lowering it too much as you will start finding a lot of false positives for names that are similar e.g., Anna and Annabelle.

fl_out <- fastLink(
  dfA = test_pool, 
  dfB = test_key,
  varnames = c("first_name"),
  cut.a = 0.92,
  stringdist.match = c("first_name"),
  dedupe.matches = F)

matches_out <- getMatches(
  dfA = test_pool, 
  dfB = test_key,
  fl.out = fl_out)

Note that I changed the order in which the datasets were entered in the functions i.e., test_pool first and test_key second. The function matches_out is written using dfA as the target. Alternatively, you can call the matches by just typing:

test_pool[fl_out$matches$inds.a, ]
test_key[fl_out$matches$inds.b, ]

I hope this helps! If anything, let us know.

All my best,

Ted

from fastlink.

This worked perfectly! Thank you so much for the quick response and detailed feedback. - Michael

from fastlink.