Confidence links between name entities in disparate documents

A method for determining a set of equivalent names for an input name string in a document set, comprising:

• retrieving from the document set a plurality of name strings that each include tokens from the input name string;
• generating a token-subset tree from the input name string and the plurality of name strings, wherein the tree comprises a set of nodes and a set of edges, and wherein each node corresponds to one of the name strings, and each edge indicates a matching relationship between a pair of nodes in the tree;
• determining an ambiguity score for each node in the tree;
• and
• generating a set of equivalent names by selectively accumulating the name strings corresponding to ancestral or descendant nodes of the input name string based on the ambiguity scores.

A system that detects a cluster of name strings that refer to the same global entity, comprising:

• a preprocessing module configured to:
• retrieve from a document set name strings for which entity clusters are to be created, and
• receive an initial set of equivalent names for each of the name strings;
• and
• a disambiguation module configured to, for each name string:
• split the set of equivalent names into subsets of singleton clusters, each singleton cluster representing a potentially unique global entity, and
• iteratively merge the singleton clusters into one or more global entity clusters by matching features associated with the singleton clusters and the global entity clusters.

A method that detects a cluster of name strings that refer to the same global entity, comprising:

• receiving an initial set of equivalent names for name strings for which entity clusters are to be created;
• splitting the set of equivalent names into subsets of singleton clusters, each singleton cluster representing a potentially unique global entity;
• and
• iteratively merging the singleton clusters into one or more global entity clusters by matching features associated with the singleton clusters and the global entity clusters.