Bigram Comparators

The Master Index Match Engine provides two different comparison functions based on the Bigram algorithm, the standard bigram (b1) and the transposition bigram (b2). A Bigram algorithm compares two strings using all combinations of two consecutive characters within each string. For example, the word “bigram” contains the following bigrams: “bi”, “ig”, “gr”, “ra”, and “am”. The Bigram comparison function returns a value between 0 and 1, which accounts for the total number of bigrams that are in common between the strings divided by the average number of bigrams in the strings. Bigrams handle minor typographical errors well.

Bigram Comparator (b1)

The Bigram Comparator is a standard Bigram comparison function, processing match fields as described above. This comparison function takes no parameters.

Advanced Bigram Comparator (b2)

The Advanced Bigram Comparator is based on the standard Bigram comparison function, but handles transpositions of characters within a string. This comparison function takes no parameters.