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Tanit Posted 16 years ago
Grammar

Grammar check ... neither - nor, prevail, outweigh

Apologies in advance for this long intro, but I feel I need to give some context ...

<intro>

Suppose you've got a table that contains, among others, two fields. Let's call them A and B.
Be A1, A2 and A3 three values taken by A and be B1, B2 and B3 three values taken by B.

Let's say we are analysing a subset of the 9 possible combinations of the values taken by the two variables and we find the following number of occurrences:

A2 & B1 => 21 occurrences

A2 & B2 => 22 occurrences
A2 & B3 => 17 occurrences

</intro>

The following is what I've come up with, but I am not satisfied with my choice of verbes.

The map also puts in evidence that there is no significant correlation between the two variables, as neither does any combination clearly prevail over/dominate the others, nor is any combination outweighed/dominated by the others.

Any suggestions?
It's part of an academic article, so I'd like it to be fairly formal ... but natural!

Thank you very much! Emotion: smile
  

Top answer

The two variables are "A" and "B," and "A2," "B1," "B2," and "B3" are values assigned to them? " - A.

— Avangi

  • The two variables are "A" and "B," and "A2," "B1," "B2," and "B3" are values assigned to them?
  • " - A.
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21 Answers
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The two variables are "A" and "B," and "A2," "B1," "B2," and "B3" are values assigned to them?
I don't understand your conclusion, but I might word it thus: "as no single combination has significantly more or fewer occurrences than the others."

- A.
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Hi Avangi,

Thanks for that
AvangiI don't understand your conclusion,
No wonder, as I have omitted why I have drawn that conclusion (in case you it is of any interested, it was based on this ).

My example was only an oversimplification of the variables and their values.
By the way, your understanding (first sentence) is correct: A and B
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TanitThe map also puts in evidence that there is no significant correlation between the two variables, as neither does any combination clearly prevail over/dominate the others, nor is any combination outweighed/dominated by the others.
Hi, Tanit.

I do need to retain the word "correlation".
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AvangiMy thought was to keep your original up to "variables," and then reword from there:
Gosh! I feel dumb!
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This is what I would write:

The table also shows that there is no significant correlation between the two variables, as no combination clearly prevails over the others.

I'd say that adding another clause that says the same thing again (or, to be exact, is deducible from the first clause) is unnecessary.

A little off-topic: Won't you need something more rigorous
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CalifJimI'd say that adding another clause that says the same thing again (or, to be exact, is deducible from the first clause) is unnecessary.
Hi, Jim.
I'm not sure if you're sayiing that "no combination prevails" may be deduced from "there is no significant correlation"; or that "no combination has significantly fewer combinations than the others" may
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TanitMy example was only an oversimplification of the variables and their values.
Thanks for the reference article. I studied it a bit, but it's not my cup of tea.
You say these are two variables among others, so I guess you're looking for correlations between variable pairs.
I had hoped to discover what constitutes an occurrence, but failed to do s
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AvangiI'm not sure if you're sayiing that "no combination prevails" may be deduced from "there is no significant correlation"; or that "no combination has significantly fewer combinations than the others" may be deduced from "no combination prevails"?
The latter. Note how much shorter my version is, and you'll see which clause I omitted as (in my opinion) unn
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CalifJimA little off-topic: Won't you need something more rigorous statistically than just eye-balling the data and saying that it looks to you like no combination prevails over the others?
Sorry, I didn't make it clear that I didn't draw that conclusion by looking at the data.
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CalifJimI believe that my version also implies the "nor" clause in Tanit's version -- though I recognize the possibility that some logician may be able to prove me wrong on that point!
To me, both the active version in the "neither" clause and the passive version in the "nor" clause amount to the same thing, namely, all combinations occur in about the same frequency.
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