The phrase "a proxy for the amount" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts where one variable or measure is used to represent or estimate another variable, particularly in data analysis or research.
Example: "In our study, we used the average income as a proxy for the amount of economic activity in the region."
Alternatives: "a substitute for the amount" or "a stand-in for the amount."
In many cases aspect ratio was used as a proxy for the amount of wing unfolding, with larger aspect ratios corresponding to larger wing areas (because the wing was assumed to be more fully deployed).
The direction of the food flow was determined by mandible postures, whereas the duration of the trophallactic events was used as a proxy for the amount of food transferred.
The former is a proxy for the amount of cash the business throws off, says Robert Willens, an accounting expert at Lehman Brothers: "The lower a company's enterprise multiple, the more susceptible the company is to being acquired".
First, the expression level serves only as a proxy for the amount of active transcription factor protein.
The signal from a spot is used as a proxy for the amount of target present, frequently in a ratio relative to the same target in another sample.
As a proxy for the amount of evolution before and after antiviral treatment we computed the average length from the common ancestor to each tip for the different clones of each patient at both genome regions.
The federal government's "Debt Held by the Public" (DHBTP) can be used as a proxy for the total amount of "cash" (at least, U.S. dollar cash) in the world.
Hence, we can apply seniority in the profession as a proxy for the total amount of knee strain.
We determined the number of reads mapping to each gene with Bowtie, normalized read count by gene length, and tallied the number of reads per base pair for each gene in each functional category/pathway to obtain a proxy for the total amount of expression.
Clustering coefficient is used as a proxy for the relative amount of biological inter-dependence among nodes and of network integration.
We hypothesize that this variable is a proxy for the relative amount of reimbursement a treating physician would expect to receive in 2006 for treating an average surgical case relative to an average non-surgical case.
