GRAMMAR

I am working on submitting a paper, having a minor grammar struggle here.

"We can determine whether instances are co-resident in under 10 seconds and as few as 2.5 seconds for a given probe."

Should it be: "We can determine whether instances are co-resident in under 10 seconds and in as few as 2.5 seconds for a given probe."

(Added an 'in' after the 'and').

Thanks.

Omitting repeated information seems fine to me, but I'm not sure what the proper procedure is for a formal paper.

Just replace every "the" for "vicious anal rape" and you're cool to go

>>1
"And" should be "or"

Unless you really mean "and"... in which case you should hopefully explain why you're able to that.

>>4

I think you're misunderstanding what he's saying. It takes them 10 seconds or less to determine whether instances are co-resident, and in some cases it takes them as few as 2.5 seconds. It's not two separate times, it's just giving a range of how long it takes. "or" wouldn't make any sense (because taking 2.5 seconds is still shorter than 10 seconds).

4chan pass test

4chan pass test (sorry)

>>5
No... you're misunderstanding. "or" would make just as much sense. It doesn't matter which duration is "longer". It's just changes the meaning of the sentence. That's what words do. The sentence is syntactical ambiguous to begin with (Is "given probes" exclusive to 2.5 seconds? etc.) It really all depends on WHAT the OP is saying and HOW he wants to say it. 

"We can determine whether instances are co-resident in under 10 seconds, or as few as 2.5 seconds, for a given probe" seems clearer to me (if it adheres to the intended meaning)

Yeah, it really depends on how a probe relates to the determination of co-residency. Some more context is needed to help.

It's pretty obvious that the whole sentence is there to establish upper (10 second) and lower (2.5 second) bounds on calculation times for a single given probe. Thinking about it as a special case for one given probe makes little sense and sounds awkward. If it were "the given probe", I would agree with you, but it isn't. It's talking about an abstract, hypothetical probe, and not a single specific one.

>>10
Just to make what I am saying clearer, the sentence is the same as "For a given probe, We can determine whether instances are co-resident in under 10 seconds and as few as 2.5 seconds."

>>10
That's assumptive. You know what happens when you assume.

Or we could do another rewrite;
Determining whether instances are co-resident, can be done in under 10 seconds; for a given probe, even as few as 2.5 seconds.

>>13
...that's still pretty awkward. Some might call into question your use of punctuation as well.

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