bipartiteRL {bstrl}

Perform baseline bipartite record linkage before streaming updates

Description

This function establishes a baseline linkage between two files which can be built upon with streaming updates adding more files. It outsources the linkage work to the BRL package and appends information to the object which will allow streaming record linkage to continue

Usage

bipartiteRL(
  df1,
  df2,
  flds = NULL,
  flds1 = NULL,
  flds2 = NULL,
  types = NULL,
  breaks = c(0, 0.25, 0.5),
  nIter = 1000,
  burn = round(nIter * 0.1),
  a = 1,
  b = 1,
  aBM = 1,
  bBM = 1,
  seed = 0
)

Arguments

df1, df2

Files 1 and 2 as dataframes where each row is a record and each column is a field.

flds

Names of the fields on which to compare the records in each file

flds1, flds2

Allows specifying field names differently for each file.

types

Types of comparisons to use for each field

breaks

Breaks to use for Levenshtein distance on string fields

nIter, burn

MCMC run length parameters. The returned number of samples is nIter - burn.

a, b

Prior parameters for m and u, respectively.

aBM, bBM

Prior parameters for beta-linkage prior.

seed

Random seed to set at beginning of MCMC run

Value

A list with class "bstrlstate" which can be passed to future streaming updates.

Examples

data(geco_small)

# Names of the columns on which to perform linkage
fieldnames <- c("given.name", "surname", "age", "occup",
                "extra1", "extra2", "extra3", "extra4", "extra5", "extra6")

# How to compare each of the fields
# First name and last name use normalized edit distance
# All others binary equal/unequal
types <- c("lv", "lv",
           "bi", "bi", "bi", "bi", "bi", "bi", "bi", "bi")
# Break continuous difference measures into 4 levels using these split points
breaks <- c(0, 0.25, 0.5)

res.twofile <- bipartiteRL(geco_small[[1]], geco_small[[2]],
                           flds = fieldnames, types = types, breaks = breaks,
                           nIter = 10, burn = 5, # Very small number of samples
                           seed = 0)