Patent ID: 7774344

Claim:
A computer storage medium having stored thereon computer executable instructions that when executed on one or more processors compares data items, comprising: a weighting component to determine a score for a focal item or subset of items having a plurality of attributes; a differentiator component to determine a comparison metric for the focal item or subset of items based in part on a distance metric to at least one other item or subset of items having a plurality of attributes, wherein the distance metric (sim xy ) for each of the at least one other item or subset of items is based upon a total quantitative weighted distance and a total categorical weighted distance, and is determined by multiplying the total quantitative weighted distance by the sum of weights of the quantitative attributes and adding the multiplication of the total categorical weighted distance by the sum of weights of the categorical attributes and dividing the previous addition by the sum of the weights of the quantitative and categorical attributes as represented by the following: sim xy = ( sim c ⁡ ( xy ) × ∑ i = 1 n c ⁢ w ci ) + ( sim q ⁡ ( xy ) × ∑ i = 1 n q ⁢ w qj ) ∑ i = 1 n c ⁢ w ci + ∑ i = 1 n c ⁢ w qj ) , ⁢ sim q ⁡ ( xy ) = 1 - ⅆ xy max ⁢  ⅆ  , ⁢ sim c ⁡ ( xy ) = ∑ i = 1 n c ⁢ w ci ⁢ sum i ∑ i n c ⁢ w ci , where sim q(xy) is a quantitative score for quantitative attributes of the items x and y, each quantitative attribute is at least one of discrete or continuous, d xy is a distance measurement for the quantitative attributes of the items x and y, and max |d| is a distance between two concept items: one having the largest values for each quantitative attribute of the set of items, and the other having the smallest values for each quantitative attribute of the set of items, d xy , and max |d| have the same weighting for the same attribute, where sim c(xy) is a categorical score for categorical attributes of the items x and y sum i equals 1 if there is a match on the i th categorical attribute of items x and y or 0 or there is not a match on the i th categorical attribute of items x and y, each categorical attribute is at least one of binary or bitmask, w ci is the weighting of the i th categorical attribute n c is the number of categorical attributes and i is an integer, where w qi is the weighting of the i th quantitative attribute, n q is the number of quantitative attributes and i is an integer; and a normalization component configured to standardize the attributes using a standard deviation that evaluates a z-score for the attributes, the normalization component also generates differentiators for attributes that are determined by contrasting each attribute's z-score and highlighting the attributes with a greatest positive or negative difference for display.