Where can I put "which"?

Question

Can I write the sentence—The curvature is defined by second derivative, the best estimation of the second derivative basing on three measurements is XXX.— like this:

The curvature is defined by second derivative, the best estimation of which basing on three measurements is XXX.

Or I must put "which" at the beginning of the subsentence if I want it to refer to the construct at previous subsentence? Like this:

The curvature is defined by second derivative, which ...

(In this case how do I rephrase the initial sentence in order to avoid repetitions?)

Answer 1

Yes, you can frame your sentence both ways although the second way is trickier than the first in the present context.

I personally would use 'whose' instead of 'which' and modify the second way as follows :

The curvature is defined by second derivative, whose best estimation is XXX,based on three measurements.

or, if you want the syntax to remain closer to the original :

The curvature is defined by second derivative, whose best estimation,based on three measurements, is XXX.

but then again, who likes so many commas? so..

Answer 2

Yes, the word 'which' is valid here. I believe it serves as a pronoun in this capacity. However, you probably ought to change 'basing' to 'based'.

Answer 3

The Microsoft Word grammar checker uses that and which interchangeably, except that which is always preceded by a comma, for example:

• The house fell down.
• The house that Jack built fell down.
• The house, which Jack built, fell down.

The use of a computerised grammar checker should be cautioned about for newcomers to English, however it does provide a number of different style checks you can choose as a first pass at valid copy. It does not make any check that what you have written makes any kind of sense.

Cue the pendants to tear this contribution apart.