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Please tell me which sounds better:

“In the other three cases a positive deviation of about 2 or 3 mm is observed when comparing the measured with the calculated values.”

or

“In the other three cases a positive deviation of about 2 or 3 mm is observed when comparing the measured values with the calculated ones.”

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It's really a matter of authorial or editorial choice. Both are succinct, both are clear, and both are easy to parse. And of course both are grammatical. They just achieve their effects by using different strategies. – John Lawler Jan 11 at 1:08

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[EDITED & CORRECTED ANSWER:] The first one, with the addition of a comma, is better for two reasons: First, it's one word shorter than the second. Second, because I'm expressing a personal opinion, I must admit to a bias against using "ones" when it can be avoided. It's not so bad in a sentence like "I like these and those but not the other ones that I saw", and it sounds like normal spoken native-speaker English to me, but when writing formal English, I much prefer to "eliminate unnecessary words", and, in the case of the sentence below, "ones" is definitely unnecessary.

In the other three cases, a positive deviation of about 2 or 3 mm is observed when comparing the measured with the calculated values.

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The referent is "values". – Mark Beadles Jan 11 at 14:22
@Mark: Ah, yes. You're right about that. Well, sometimes we don't see what we don't want to see, I guess. My mistake. I'll have to see whether I can make the answer reasonable or else delete it. I don't like using "ones" if there's another way to say the same thing. I'd appreciate a judgment. – Bill Franke Jan 11 at 15:04
   
@Turrialba: I've edited and corrected my answer because I was wrong. I still prefer the first sentence, but for a different reason (two of them, actually). Perhaps you'd like to uncheck the answer now that it's been changed. If you can't, then I'll be happy to delete it if you'd like me to, or if others think that I should. – Bill Franke Jan 11 at 15:13

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