Normalization

Emsi classifies various profile field values such as company and school into a smaller number of fixed categories to enable meaningful aggregation and analysis. We call this process “normalization.” An example of normalization would be to normalize free-form variations of “St. Louis, Missouri” as found in different profiles to “St. Louis. MO”. One person might list their location as “Saint Louis Missouri”; another might list “ST Louis MO”; and a third might list “St. Louis Missouri”. Normalization corrects all variations of this city name to “St. Louis, MO”. Without the normalization step, aggregate analysis of profiles would be impossible–searching for profiles in “St. Louis Missouri” would automatically exclude profiles where the person wrote their location as “Saint Louis Missouri”.