The phrase "a mere approximation of" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing something that is not exact but is close enough to serve a purpose or provide a general idea.
Example: "The model provides a mere approximation of the actual data, but it is useful for initial analysis."
Alternatives: "a rough estimate of" or "a close representation of".
The word neologism has appeared in 19 New York Times articles in the past year, including on Oct. 17 in the On Language column "Truthiness," by Ben Zimmer: Around 4 p.m. on Oct. 17, 2005, Stephen Colbert was searching for a word.... What he was driving at wasn't truth anyway, but a mere approximation of it — something truthish or truthy, unburdened by the factual.
But any simulation is a mere approximation of a person and, as anyone who has owned a Facebook profile knows, the act of recording one's life on social media is a selective process.
Therefore, it might be that the strict use of the intersection defines better clusters that the use of the median, which is a mere approximation to the intersection point.
The problem was that Syberberg's methods were apt to his film, which was conspicuously stagebound and impressionistic; Coppola was making a Hollywood film with at least a simulacrum of dramatic realism, where the artifice had to be no mere approximation of life but an improvement on it.
Among those that do, not all civil union laws are so rigorous; some are mere approximations of equality that do not confer full parental rights.
And the licensing problem persists: PES 2017 does have a Barcelona licence this time around, but the only officially licensed Premier League teams are Arsenal and Liverpool – which means other sides get weird vaguely indicative new monickers (Tottenham Hotspur, for example, become North East London in the game), and the kits and club crests are mere approximations of their real-life counterparts.
All other religious views on the other hand are mere approximations of that truth in various degrees and from various perspectives.
Second, the term "estimation" is used by realists to highlight the fact that measurement results are mere approximations of true values (Trout 1998: 46).
The analysis proceeds with the non-realizable scenario, which captures the fact that hypothesis classes are mere approximations of reality.
As I set out on my boxing education with The Pictorial History of Boxing as my first and most trusted guide, it quickly became apparent that far from a Hollywood exaggeration of greatness, Creed was but the merest approximation of the real-life fistic superman upon whom he was based.
The truth is that most interviews in most media are merely an approximation of the encounter.
