Madam, - Kevin Myers deals brilliantly with lies and damn lies, but he should steer clear of statistics.
He tells us reassuringly (An Irishman's Diary, May 23rd) that Exxon-Mobil's profit in the first quarter, at over $7 billion, is less than half of the $18.5 billion invested by Irish companies in the United States. That is arithmetically true, but it makes no more sense than to say that the milk produced by a cow last week was worth less than the neighbour's tractor.
It is rarely meaningful to make comparisons between profits and investments, but to try to compare profit in an arbitrarily short period of three months with investments built up over half a century is nothing short of ludicrous.
If Mr Myers had instead taken Exxon-Mobil's profits for a year (say, $25 to 30 billion), he could have proclaimed the shock-horror news that these exceeded the Irish companies' investments by 50 per cent! Same statistical data; opposite (and equally fatuous) inference. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL DRURY,
Avenue Louise,
Brussels.