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Geni4u Posted 21 years ago
Grammar

".., provided ..."

Hi teachers,

I want to know how the following sentence is grammartically correct:

"The entire population tends to converge toward the optimum, provided the initial guess is good enough."

Especially, in ", ??? provided ...", what is omitted and why?

Thank you.
  

Top answer

Hello geni4u 'provided that' is a conjunction, which means 'on condition that' or sometimes simply 'if'. So: 1. The entire population tends to converge toward the optimum, provided (that) the initial guess is good enough.

— MrPedantic

  • Hello geni4u 'provided that' is a conjunction, which means 'on condition that' or sometimes simply 'if'.
  • So: 1.
  • The entire population tends to converge toward the optimum, provided (that) the initial guess is good enough.
  • This means the same as: 2.
  • The entire population tends to converge toward the optimum, if the initial guess is good enough.
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5 Answers
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Hello geni4u

'provided that' is a conjunction, which means 'on condition that' or sometimes simply 'if'. So:

1. The entire population tends to converge toward the optimum, provided (that) the initial guess is good enough.

This means the same as:

2. The entire population tends to converge toward the optimum, if the initial guess is good enough.

MrP
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Thank you. Now it's clear!
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English people often use "providing" by mistake. In fact I'd go as far as to say that they invariably do so!
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"providing that" is given as an acceptable usage in the Cambridge dictionary, so is not a mistake, as I understand it
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Do we need a comma in the second sentence?

Regards,
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