LETTER : Algebra no joke

Sir: It is a pity that you see fit to snigger on your front page at a "piece of algebra" produced by a statistician to identify unusually high numbers of false alarms (report, 12 March). The equation you display could be used (and in broad terms understood) by many 16-year-olds if only the ideas and notation employed were properly explained.

If you lowered the level of discussion on your sports or business or arts pages so that they could be understood by those absolutely ignorant of such matters, you would rapidly lose custom. Why not raise your treatment of mathematics and statistics to recognise that many readers can appreciate averages and square roots when they see them?

NICHOLAS COX

Department of Geography

University of Durham