Three questions, three different measurements
Every measurement answers a separate question, so one high score cannot stand in for meaning, origin, or pronunciation. Read position, inventory, and edit distance as separate evidence.
- Position
- Which letters occupy the same index?
- Inventory
- Which letters and repeated counts do both words contain?
- Edit distance
- How many insertions, deletions, or substitutions transform one string?
Worked comparison: MAP and MOP
MAP and MOP have the same length. M matches in the first position and P matches in the third, while A changes to O. Their Levenshtein edit distance is one because one substitution transforms the first word into the second. MAP and AMP use the same inventory but do not preserve those positions.
MAPone substitutionMOP