Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!wums2!rueter_a
From: rueter_a@wums2.wustl.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: other forth applications
Message-ID: <3940.26fd162a@wums2.wustl.edu>
Date: 24 Sep 90 01:08:10 GMT
References: <1757.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Lines: 21

>          Agreed, SOUNDEX is a powerful and impressive tool for uses
>          such as this. But like Zafar, when implementing databases I
>          _wanted_ to find a legitimate application for it but couldn't.
> 
>          In a small operation where 3 or 4 people have a variety of
>          tasks to do on a computer (ie: arn't bored to death doing
>          mindless data entry for 8 hours every working day), and the
>          databases arn't likely to be larger than a few thousand records
>          anyway, there is not much need for this kind of tool. Errors
>          are less likely to occur, and are usually caught and corrected
>          by someone else.

I agree, but SOUNDEX with the birthdate ( in month/day/year order) of a person
is very powerful. We keep track of 5 years worth of patients (400,000) and have
a miss match rate of 1/50 verses 1/10 for other group at the medical school 
clinics.

Allen Rueter
Mallinckrodt Insitute of Radiology

allen@cisco!wugate.wustl.edu <- I think, Cisco is decnet, wugate is a unix rtr