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jhamil560's avatar
jhamil560
New Member
4 years ago
Solved

Fuzzy Match calculation explained

So i thought I knew how Power Query is using the Jaccard similarity to generate a fuzzy match. However I am not getting expeced matches in some instances unless I set the threshold lower to .5   Ca...
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  • v-yingjl's avatar
    v-yingjl
    4 years ago

    Hi jhamil560 ,

    About similarity threshold in fuzzy match, here is the explaination in Power Query editor in Power BI Desktop:

    Similarity Threshold:

    Indicates how similar two values need to be in order to match. The minimum value of 0.00 causes all values to match each other. The maximum value of 1.00 only allows exact matches. The default value is 0.80.

     

    To check the calculation of this threshold, you can create a table in Power Query online(dataflow) to use cluster values feature, please refer this document which introduces it in details:

    How fuzzy matching works in Power Query? 

     

    Note:

    Currently only the Cluster values feature in Power Query Online will provide a new column with the similarity score.

     

    Best Regards,
    Community Support Team _ Yingjie Li
    If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
4 years ago

I don't know, maybe it looks for length (different), characters in same position (none), who can tell what the computer sees--  but I bet that if you simply add a column that removes spaces to both queries--maybe only to just one of them, and they'll probably fuzzy match. Also, make sure you have the Match by combining text parts checked.

 

--Nate