Lessons learned: Wildcard searches

[Allan Jordan aejordan@aol.com]

X-No-archive: yes
This is just a good example of the power of wildcard searching which hopefully
everyone can get some clues for their more difficult problems.

Here's my example of how using wildcards solved a very difficult problem:

There's a grave in the cemetery where the name and date is clear and I confirmed
all of it with the cemetery office. Yet no matter how much searching was done in
the database for death certificates this one could not be found. Of course it is
always possible the person died in a different location but the cemetery even
had the home address and her age on file for a burial almost 110 years ago.

The name I was looking for as per the grave records is Elke Charogrodsky, age
32, living in Brooklyn. That's what the cemetery confirmed.

If you want to test your skills stop here and go to the Morse one step link to
search NYC vital records for deaths and see if you can find her.

(Hint I have a copy of the death certificate in my hands .... so it exists.)

In New York City there is no data by date of death.

So I tried obvious variations like only using the E for the first name, narrowing
it to November 1909 deaths, I tried the sounds like. Nothing. How about you if
you are playing along?

I tried reversing it so that Elke was the family name. Nothing.

I tried just Charogrodsky. I tried Charog* with the * standing for wildcards. I
tried Ch*gr*d* (that's a complicated one where all the vowels are replaced with
wild cards plus I truncated the name accepting all endings). Nothing

I kept trying variations like that, ends with, sounds like, etc.

Finally I tired contains *ch*r*gr* where the first letter was also a wildcard.

(Be warned some of these searches take a long time to complete.)

By using the wild card for the first letter as well as dropping all of the vowels
in the name I got three results one of which is:

Helise Scharegotsky, died November 28, 1909 in Kings County, age 32!

Yes the people filling out the death certificate name changed Elke Charogrdsky
into Helise Schargotsky!

When I got the certificate everything aligned perfectly ... except the spelling
of the name.

Lesson learned!

Allan Jordan
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