Sir, – Damian Loscher has the audacity to use a statistical term to claim "a gain of four points in this latest poll is significant" in his article about your latest poll (Opinion, December 12th).
A 4 point gain is not statistically significant when your polls have a confidence level of 95 per cent and a sampling error variation of plus or minus 3 per cent. The true interpretation of the results, for Fine Gael is "no change". – Yours, etc,
IAN GLEN,
Kelly Square,
Vienna, Virginia, US.
Damian Loscher, managing director of Ipsos MRBI responds: “The increase in support for Fine Gael is significant, in many ways. The reader is correct to highlight the potential when commenting on political polls for ‘significant’ to be strictly interpreted as statistically significant and the point is noted for future polls.”