I am now writing a research paper that tries to distinguish two computational methods. These two methods have very similar mathematical formulations but they are actually quite different.
I am wondering what word or phrase I could use to describe this? I found on the surface but not sure if the choice is correct as Webster tells me the synonyms are actually different than I am expecting.
Here is the sentence I have now.
On the surface, both methods use small number of labeled samples during training and validation. But they have contrasting statistical implications as […]
Best Answer
"On the surface" is a reasonable phrase to use here, other options would be "superficially", or "at first glance".
I'd say that your example sentence is good but could be improved a little, as there's a connotation that both methods actually do not use a small number of labelled samples for training and validation, and that they only appear to "on the surface". The fact that they both do this isn't superficial, as they both actually do that - it's the similarity between the algorithms that's superficial. I would rephrase it as:
In conversation or with broader context the sentence doesn't sound particularly odd, and you'd likely be reasonably well understood, but it would be best to say that the similarity overall is superficial, rather than than implying superficiality of specific things that actually are the same.