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I read with interest and some concern your article "Elite v-cs fear 'end of road' for concentration of research" (1 January). Unless I am very stupid, the numbers are totally incorrect.

If we take Imperial College London and assume a fixed amount of total funding and no formula change, it goes down from 6.8 per cent of the pot to 3.84 per cent. This is a drop in funding of 44 per cent - much more than you get by simply subtracting the two percentages.

Also, you have quoted a 9.71 per cent total loss for the universities listed. This is merely a sum of all the percentages. Again this is flawed as it would be possible to get more than 100 per cent by this method.

I suggest you need to revisit the arithmetic involved and would be interested to hear your response.

Peter Barnwell, Bournemouth University

(See correction, page 15.)