Patent Document ID: 20100306148
Application ID: 12474258
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. Computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon that, when executed, cause a computing device to perform a method of predicting whether character strings refer to a same subject matter, the method comprising: identifying in a database a first character string and a second character string that are included in a set of text documents; utilizing the computing device to generate a prediction value, which quantifies likelihood that the first character string and the second character string refer to the same subject matter, by applying a prediction algorithm to each of the first character string and the second character string, (1) wherein the prediction algorithm is determined based on an analysis of a training set of data, which includes a plurality of character strings that are included in the set of text documents and that are combinable into character-string pairs, (2) wherein the analysis of the training set of data includes generating from a mapping of the character-string pairs parameters that are usable to define the prediction algorithm, and (3) wherein the mapping is based on a first kernel function that combines a measure of similarity of a character-string pair with a measure of document frequency of strings of the character-string pair, and based on the prediction value, associating in the database the first character string with the second character string.