Locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) is a fundamental algorithmic technique widely employed in large-scale data processing applications, such as nearest-neighbor search, entity resolution, and clustering. However, its applicability in some real-world scenarios is limited due to the need for careful design of hashing functions that align with specific metrics. Existing LSH-based Entity Blocking solutions primarily rely on generic similarity metrics such as Jaccard similarity, whereas practical use cases often demand complex and customized similarity rules surpassing the capabilities of generic similarity metrics. Consequently, designing LSH functions for these customized similarity rules presents considerable challenges. In this research, we propose a neuralization approach to enhance locality-sensitive hashing by training deep neural networks to serve as hashing functions for complex metrics. We assess the effectiveness of this approach within the context of the entity resolution problem, which frequently involves the use of task-specific metrics in real-world applications. Specifically, we introduce NLSHBlock (Neural-LSH Block), a novel blocking methodology that leverages pre-trained language models, fine-tuned with a novel LSH-based loss function. Through extensive evaluations conducted on a diverse range of real-world datasets, we demonstrate the superiority of NLSHBlock over existing methods, exhibiting significant performance improvements. Furthermore, we showcase the efficacy of NLSHBlock in enhancing the performance of the entity matching phase, particularly within the semi-supervised setting.

With the rapid growth of usage of social network, the patterns, the scales, and the rate of information exchange have brought profound impacts on research and practice in finance. One important topic is the stock market efficiency analysis. Traditional schemes in finance focus on identifying significant abnormal returns triggered by important events. However, those events are merely identified by regular financial announcements such as mergers, equity issuances, and financial reports. Related data-driven approaches mainly focus on developing trading strategies using social media data, while the results are usually lack of theoretical explanations. In this paper, we fill the gap between the usage of social media data and financial theories. We propose a Degree of Social Attention (DSA) framework for stock analysis based on influence propagation model. Specifically, we define the self-influence for users in a social network and the DSA for stocks. A recursive process is also designed for dynamic value updating. Furthermore, we provide two modified approaches to reduce the computational cost. Our testing results from the Chinese stock market suggest that the proposed framework effectively captures stock abnormal returns based on the related social media data, and DSA is verified to be a key factor to link social media activities to the stock market.