Sir, - Dr Garret FitzGerald's articles in The Irish Times on Saturdays are a must for those who want to keep abreast of what is happening in the world's economy and its impact on ours.
His statistical analysis of data from varied sources is usually presented in a way that duffers such as I can easily understand.
However, I have to confess that he lost me in last Saturday's article by his unthinking use of different fractions to highlight a point about our export figures. He states that one sixth was to the US, five eights were to the EU, and one fifth was to the rest of the world. With respect to the good doctor, this was very difficult to calculate until one converted the fractions to a common denominator of 240. Adding up the converted fractions one gets a total export figure of 238 over 240, which is nearly 100 per cent.
But, should we have to do this particularly on a Saturday morning, when reading our Irish Times is done in a more leisurely fashion from the rest of the week and doing convoluted maths is not a high priority!
It is often said that those who wish to mislead or confuse will resort to this sort of subterfuge to disguise the true figure not readily obvious. I am sure this was the last thing Dr FitzGerald had in mind. - Yours, etc.,
Brendan M. Redmond, Hazelbrook Road, Terenure, Dublin 6W.