Whois & Analysis for fullcontact.com

Record linkage (RL) refers to the task of finding records in a data set that refer to the same entity across different data sources (e.g., data files, books, websites, databases).

Record linkage is necessary when joining data sets based on entities that may or may not share a common identifier (e.g., database key, URI, National identification number), as may be the case due to differences in record shape, storage location, and/or curator style or preference.

A data set that has undergone RL-oriented reconciliation may be referred to as being cross-linked.

Data (or) is a set of values of qualitative or quantitative variables.

An example of qualitative data would be an anthropologist's handwritten notes about his or her interviews with people of an Indigenous tribe.

Pieces of data are individual pieces of information.

While the concept of data is commonly associated with scientific research, data is collected by a huge range of organizations and institutions, including businesses (e.g., sales data, revenue, profits, stock price), governments (e.g., crime rates, unemployment rates, literacy rates) and non-governmental organizations (e.g., censuses of the number of homeless people by non-profit organizations).