Data Science Fundamentals: Matching

This is a continuation of a series of Data Science Fundamentals posts.  In this post I will briefly describe Matching.

Matching, also known as Similarity Matching, is a technique of using data about objects to identify “like” objects. For example, Amazon or Walmart may use matching to identify “like” customers based on their browsing, liking, and purchasing history.

This information can then be used to provide product recommendations to these customers.

Product recommendations based on browsing and purchase history, and similarity matching

The results of Matching can be used for Classification and Regression; and Matching underlies Clustering.  These techniques were described in previous posts.