empirical evaluation

This paper is the evidence-oriented source in the group. Rather than stopping at definitions, it compares approximate string comparators in a real patient-matching setting and reports practical behavior under thresholded linkage decisions.

It is especially useful because it anchors metric choice to observed outcomes. In that domain and at a threshold of 0.8, the authors report the highest linkage sensitivity for Jaro-Winkler, which makes the paper a helpful reminder that comparator performance is application-dependent and should be validated empirically. The tradeoff is scope: it is an older study and a narrow domain reference rather than a general survey of fuzzy matching methods.