Group By/ Fuzzy Match

Question

Hi,

I have attached an excel below, which I am having trouble with. Essentially I have grouped the data by company name. However I am also trying to match column A and find the corresponding value in column B. However as you can see, column a and b differ quite a lot in terms of abbreviations, spellings etc.

If anyone could help provide a workflow which achieves the aforementioned end result that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Daniel

Fuzzy Match Excel.xlsx

mceleavey · Answer

HI @danielmaguire ,

Yeah, once you have the workflow set up you can play around with it, but I would recommend stripping out components of the string you wish to match and attempting multi-fuzzy matches. Try stripping out the single letter (Type A, for example) then fuzzy matching the remaining string and matching the letters like for like.

Fuzzy matching is an art, not a science 🙂

M.

danielmaguire · Answer

Hi @BrandonB and @mceleavey .

Thanks for providing those workflows. As you mentioned it is extremely difficult to get the match correct given the similarities between the two columns. However, I will continue to play around with the data to see if I can get it to work.

Thanks again,

Daniel

BrandonB · Answer

Here are a couple of training videos if you are interested in the topic:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Videos/Fuzzy-Matching-for-Beginners/td-p/330575

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Videos/Fuzzy-Matching-Intermediate-Users/td-p/43852