The deficit, in other words, was simply a useful proxy.

It also seems clear that private counselors can be a useful proxy, offering the kind of guidance adolescents are often reluctant to accept from their parents.

Noncompetitive bids for the securities, a useful proxy of demand from these types of investors, amounted to $835 million, the highest level since August 1983.

During her regency, the Prince of Wales attempted to start a number of quarrels with his mother, whom he saw as a useful proxy to irritate the King.

And auto sales are a useful proxy for business inventories, since unsold autos constitute a big percentage of them.

Tom Malloch of stockbroker Redmayne Bentley agreed and said infrastructure funds provided a useful index-linked proxy with relatively low levels of volatility.

A useful proxy for virulence is the set-point viral load (SPVL), which is correlated with the time until AIDS.

Whilst blatantly racialist jokes became less acceptable, elephant jokes were a useful proxy.

But the von Hippels say that these animals are a useful proxy for threatened species.

Surveys used in social science research frequently include questions about housing tenure, because it is a useful proxy for income or wealth, and people are less reluctant to give information about it.