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Surname language model #4

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Surname language model #4

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@aridf aridf commented Mar 5, 2021

The main purpose of this PR is to develop methods for handling missing name information by borrowing info from name lists.

Currently, it includes a dataset of character-trigram conditional probabilities calculated using the probabilities in the 2010 Census surname list. The python notebook with these calculations is in inst/. There is also an R function, race_from_letters() that generates P(R|S) using these conditional probabilities.

Right now the numbers don't look great for very common surnames, although I'd like to test it on actual unseen names from the voter file to see if this improves over ignoring the name altogether. The math may also need some work. At very least, this should produce estimates for unseen and rare names in voter files.

To do:

  • Double-check the math
  • Integrate race_from_letters() into BISG to operate on unknown names
  • Expand set of P(R|S) models beyond trigram

@aridf aridf requested a review from pssachdeva March 5, 2021 22:05
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