I have the following sentences:
- Line segments shorter than to a certain threshold are removed by assuming that have been formed by noisy data.
- This significantly improved the result.
I want, if possible, to combine these two sentences. Is the following sentence grammatically correct?
Line segments shorter than to a certain threshold are removed by
assuming that have been formed by noisy data, which significantly
improved the result.
Answer
Let’s start by fixing up the grammar and readability of your first sentence. You wrote:
Line segments shorter than to a certain threshold are removed by assuming that have been formed by noisy data.
There are several problems here. “shorter than to a certain threshold” doesn’t make sense; the “to” is extraneous, and we describe things as being below a threshold, not shorter than it. But length is important to mention in this case, so let’s revise a bit:
Line segments with lengths below a certain threshold are removed by assuming that have been formed by noisy data.
So that’s better, but still not quite there yet. There’s a logical error in the second half of your sentence; you say that the line segments are “removed by assuming [x]”, but this doesn’t make sense. By refers to the manner in which you remove them; you’re removing them because you assume [x], but by isn’t the proper word here. You’ve also got a small mistake of missing the word they to refer back to the line segments, and a tiny tense error (have been should be were). So if we correct this, we end up with:
Line segments with lengths below a certain threshold are removed on the assumption that they were formed by noisy data.
Okay, so now your first sentence means what you want it to say, but you still need to combine the two. Thankfully this is now quite easy; you can simply append the second sentence to the first (with a few minor changes to match the tense of the first sentence).
Line segments with lengths below a certain threshold are removed on the assumption that they were formed by noisy data, significantly improving the results [of the experiment].
I added “of the experiment” in brackets at the end because you don’t otherwise specifically refer to what results you’re talking about. If context makes it clear, that’s fine. But taking this sentence alone, adding a few words at the end would improve clarity.
Gilles noted in a comment that removed by assuming is actually acceptable in technical writing. So if you like, you may keep that structure and use the following sentence:
Line segments with lengths below a certain threshold are removed by assuming that they were formed by noisy data, significantly improving the results [of the experiment].
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : gnp , Answer Author : WendiKidd
