Your constant reference to your survey as a "random survey" (Special Edition, Mar. 1-7 and previous) makes me wonder about the quality of the research training at the Institute of Mass Communications at the University of the Philippines. The four seniors assisting you on this project obviously don’t know that a random survey is and worse, don't know that they don’t know.

But Mr. Aurelio Z. Bernardinos’s letter (Special Edition, Mar. 8-14) stirs even deeper concern about the standards of the UP College of Social Sciences and Philosophy. Like his fellow undergraduates at the IMC, Mr. Bernardino doesn’t see the cause-and-effect relationship between random sampling and the representativeness of the resulting sample.

Given the ignorance, Mr. Bernardino takes the logical and commonsensical view that to evaluate the representativeness of the sample, we should compare the sample with the population is supposed to represent. But here, common sense fails. Mr. Bernardino does not see that such a comparison should be carried out only when the sample is complete.

Mr. Bernardino was content to follow the lead of Mr. Ben G. Domingo, Jr., an undergraduate at Central Luzon University, who made such an ill-advised comparison when the sample was only two-thirds complete. Mr. Bernardino did not catch the logical error inherent in Mr. Domingos’ sophomoric procedure.

Mr. Bernardino may not even know how to read. He fails to understand that your statement about your paper’s popularity (which he calls "a fallacy in argumentation") was not made to support the validity of the survey. Rather, it was made in response to Mr. Domingo’s gratuitous suggestion that you had received so few ballots that you had padded each candidate’s votes by 100 to "prove the popularity of the survey.

(Mrs.) Toni Moran

Graduate student
Gregorio Araneta University Foundation
Metro Manila