CompTIA DataX DY0-001 (V1) Practice Question

The correct answer is Damerau-Levenshtein distance. This metric is the most appropriate choice because it is an extension of the classic Levenshtein distance, specifically designed to handle the transposition of two adjacent characters as a single edit operation. In the given scenario, where transpositions like "mdoel" for "model" are common, the Damerau-Levenshtein distance provides a more accurate and efficient measure of similarity by counting this as one edit instead of two (a deletion and an insertion), which is how the standard Levenshtein distance would handle it.

• Levenshtein distance is incorrect because, while it measures insertions, deletions, and substitutions, it does not account for transpositions as a single operation.
• Hamming distance is incorrect because it is only applicable to strings of equal length and only counts the number of positions at which characters are different (substitutions). It does not handle insertions, deletions, or transpositions.
• Jaro-Winkler distance is incorrect because, although it considers transpositions, it is a similarity metric that gives special weight to matching prefixes and is primarily used for tasks like record linkage and name matching, rather than being a direct edit-distance measure optimized for adjacent transpositions.