Link or join?
Similar to joins, record linkage is the act of linking data from different sources regarding the same entity. But unlike joins, record linkage does not require exact matches between different pairs of data, and instead can find close matches using string similarity. This is why record linkage is effective when there are no common unique keys between the data sources you can rely upon when linking data sources such as a unique identifier.
In this exercise, you will decide which method is the best course of action to solve each problem.
This exercise is part of the course
Cleaning Data in R
Hands-on interactive exercise
Turn theory into action with one of our interactive exercises
