Recently I learned that in English you say things like

• The latter was calculated by approximating the surface area to that of a spheroid.
• The only thing approximating to a real dessert was baklava, a particularly mean and thankless example of its kind being dry, almost syrup and nut-free.

(Taken from Oxford's Online Dictionary.)

Note the preposition to.

Now, would you put to into the following sentence (concerning a formal method)?

• Our nonrelational program analysis will overapproximate [to] the actual program semantics.

Please don't answer unless you are good at English. (You can move the question to the English community, but to date I have been under the impression that most English teachers are not that aware of the CS vocabulary.)

Recently I learned that in English you say things like

• The latter was calculated by approximating the surface area to that of a spheroid.
• The only thing approximating to a real dessert was baklava, a particularly mean and thankless example of its kind being dry, almost syrup and nut-free.

(Taken from Oxford's Online Dictionary.)

Note the preposition to.

Now, would you put to into the following sentence (concerning a formal method)?

• Our nonrelational program analysis will overapproximate [to] the actual program semantics.

Please don't answer unless you are good at English. (You can move the question to the English community, but to date I have been under the impression that most English teachers are not that aware of the computer science vocabulary. They are typically having a hard time trying to understand the meaning of the above sentence.)