Glossary entry (derived from question below)
English term or phrase:
vary significantly
English answer:
vary significantly
- The asker opted for community grading. The question was closed on 2014-08-28 16:54:25 based on peer agreement (or, if there were too few peer comments, asker preference.)
English term
vary significantly
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Is there a better expression for "vary significantly"? Thanks.
Aug 25, 2014 06:00: Tony M changed "Field" from "Social Sciences" to "Other" , "Field (specific)" from "Linguistics" to "General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters"
Aug 25, 2014 09:04: Yvonne Gallagher changed "Level" from "PRO" to "Non-PRO"
Non-PRO (3): Edith Kelly, GILLES MEUNIER, Yvonne Gallagher
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Responses
France
Tracking the right turn of phrase
Native in: English (Variant: British) 
Works in: French to English, English, French
vary significantly
This being the case, I see no reason to take the risk of replacing this at worst perfectly understandable adjective.
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acetran
18 mins
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Thanks, acetran!
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Tony M
27 mins
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Very generous of you, Tony, thanks!
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Coqueiro
: Initially assigned to social sciences by the asker. Should be kept as it is, a clearly defined term in statistics.
1 hr
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Yes, though it is, of course, also used in the non-technical sense. No way for us to know which, here. Thanks.
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B D Finch
3 hrs
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Thanks!
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AllegroTrans
6 hrs
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Thanks!
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Tina Vonhof (X)
9 hrs
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Thanks
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Brazil
Technical - Fast - good price - accurate
Native in: English (Variant: US) 
, Portuguese (Variant: Brazilian)
Works in: English to Portuguese, Portuguese to English, English, and 1 more.
vary appreciably..markedly..greatly..substantially
sig·nif·i·cant·ly
sigˈnifikəntlē/
adverb
adverb: significantly
1.
in a sufficiently great or important way as to be worthy of attention.
"energy bills have increased significantly this year"
synonyms: notably, remarkably, outstandingly, importantly, crucially, materially, appreciably;
markedly, considerably, obviously, conspicuously, strikingly, signally
"significantly better"
meaningfully, expressively, eloquently, revealingly, suggestively, knowingly
"he paused significantly"
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B D Finch
: Why do you imagine any of these alternatives is better than the original?// They all lose the statistical meaning that may have been intended by the writer of the source text.
8 hrs
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Why do you imagine that I think these are better ?? - I am giving the asker alternatives.."statistical meaning that may have been intended" ...I was suggesting alternatives for the asker's query - not guessing what the author may have intended
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AllegroTrans
: these are ROUGHLY equivalent, but not better...
11 hrs
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and not worse either
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worked for int. orgs (IMF, OAS, IDB)
Native in: English
Works in: Spanish to English, German to English
vary considerably
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Note added at 3 mins (2014-08-25 00:14:28 GMT)
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depends how big the variation is so perhaps if you could supply the statistics we could select the best term but as its stands your rendering is fine
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Note added at 38 mins (2014-08-25 00:50:11 GMT)
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but don't be too concerned if the statistics show a major variation ... you could also use "substantially" but I repeat that your version is fine to my English native-speaker ear
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Note added at 1 hr (2014-08-25 01:17:21 GMT)
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so ok
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Note added at 2 hrs (2014-08-25 02:59:10 GMT)
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if it's not brokem don't fix it
vary significantly
As airmailrpl has already pointed out, 'significantly' simply means 'in a manner that is significant'; usually, in a literal sense, something that might be statistically meaningful, for example — so more than just a normal, random fluctuation.
Now the point is, even quite a small variation might be significant in certain circumstances; but in everyday parlance, 'significantly' has come to have the less literally accurate meaning of 'appreciably' and similar alternative synonyms as suggested by others.
So whether or not your original term is really the most apposite depends, as David has said, on whether you are seeking to emphasize the significance or the sheer magnitude of the variation.
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AllegroTrans
6 hrs
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Thanks, C!
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Tina Vonhof (X)
9 hrs
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Thanks, Tina!
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Björn Vrooman
: Personally, I think your explanation is the best of the lot. See discussion as well.
1 day 3 hrs
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Thanks, Björn!
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Will do!
Native in: Portuguese (Variant: European/Portugal)
Works in: English to Portuguese, French to Portuguese, German to Portuguese, and 1 more.
can be quite/very/considerably different
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B D Finch
: As it is quite likely that the writer meant that it was a statistically significant variation, it would be wrong to change the term they used to "something completely different".// Your "completely different" solutions lose any ST statistical reference.
43 mins
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I did not suggest a change to "something completely different". My suggestion was "can be quite/very/considerably different". I only meant to provide a "completely different solution" from the ones provided by other colleagues.//General/Conversation/Greet
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AllegroTrans
: these are VERY roughly equivalent, but not better...
3 hrs
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Tony M
: I am more bothered by the use of 'can be'... the inference from Asker's quoted text is very much that they are, and this would therefore tend to change the tone quite significantly.
4 hrs
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United States
True words...
Native in: English (Variant: US) , Spanish (Variant: Latin American)
Works in: Spanish to English, Spanish, English, and 1 more.
varies considerably/greatly/incomparably/extremely/notably...
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AllegroTrans
: Why should any of these be better than the asker's text?// well that was the asker's question to all of us...
36 mins
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if the asker decides so then yes. if not, then no.
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Tony M
: Many of these would be completely unsuitable in Asker's context; others are possible, but scarcely justify a C/L of 5. Impossilbe, you were the latest poster!
4 hrs
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And some are copied by others that posted after I did...
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Discussion
To the asker's question:
As unfortunate of a trend as omitting hyphens can be nowadays, I personally believe the same is true for writing a text in science and using the same term but under different circumstances. If significant has a special meaning, it should refer to this specific meaning and not to everything because you can't think of another word right now. Actually, that was what one part of my studies was all about: not mixing up ordinary and scientific uses of a word just because it's convenient.
Consider the sentence from the question about "hot topic":
"Regional discrimination [...] has been a hot topic among Chinese educators and legal experts in recent years."
Now, this here is the next question by the same asker. Both sentences combined sound like they're part of an introductory statement or explanation. Thus, I wouldn't read too much into it (which I did not(!) say you did but that's how some of the other responses made it seem like).
It is not a cas of obfuscating anything — it is simply important to understand whether the writer was using the word 'significantly' in it's technical meaning (as in statistics) or simply in its woollier meaning in everyday language.
I really like the note of caution in your answer. I am simply a bit puzzled as to why so many people seem to refer to statistical relevance here. Having read enough social science books in my life, I do know how scientists write, and sometimes it's just not pretty - I should point to our other discussion about energetic(al) here.
Now, I invite everyone to speculate here, but I don't see any reason to make the text more complicated than it should be.
The sentence basically says:
The quota system introduced by Chinese universities has made it necessary to adjust student cutoff scores for admission. These scores are much higher for provinces that have fewer universities.
Of course, you can supply the above statement with 5000 "statistics" - which would only obfuscate the fact that this is a simple observation.
By the way: cut-off/cutoff is another nice example for the discussion about hyphens :)
"Regional Discrimination
A university usually sets a fixed admission quota for each province, with a higher number of students coming from its home province. As the advanced educational resources (number and quality of universities) are distributed unevenly across China, it is argued that people are being discriminated against during the admission process based on their geographic region. For example, compared to Beijing, Henan province has fewer universities per capita. Therefore, Henan usually receives fewer admission quotas compared with Beijing, which makes a significantly higher position among applicants necessary for a Henan candidate to be admitted by the same university than his Beijing counterpart. The unequal admission schemes for different provinces and regions might intensify competition among examinees from provinces with fewer advanced education resources."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Higher_Education_Entra...