The State Changers meeting was a discussion that primarily focused on resolving an issue faced by Matthew during the implementation of a fuzzy search from a table using the 'starts with' operator in a search function setup. Matthew raised the issue that while the expected results were returned for a query like 'consult', when he added an 'i' to the end (making it 'consulti'), the search returned no results, even though logically it should.
Ray then explained how fuzzy search operates differently from other forms of search methods. He noted that fuzzy search works off linguistic rules and uses a process called lemmatization, leading to a unique form of results. This essentially means that demonstrating a particular root word to various words based on their linguistic connections and not just by the sequence of letters. Therefore, the combination 'consult+i' does not return any results because it doesn't relate to any existing terms. Ray also pointed out that if Matthew wants a search function that operates in the classic sense (finds any sequence of letters within a word), he should consider using a filter rather than fuzzy search. Alternatively, he could utilize both methods by executing two separate queries, each yielding different results based on their rule sets. This would allow a more sophisticated data presentation to the users. Despite the technical nature of the conversation, no specific technologies or tools mentioned in the keywords provided were directly discussed in this meeting.
(Source: Office Hours 10/20/2023 )
