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It simply does not add up

Somebody just pointed out to me a document's final copy -which I designed, wrote, printed and distributed- that had a mathematical error resulting in a total figure that was Ksh. 200 short of the components that add up to it. I told him to ignore it, since most of the readers would not notice it. After all, it is not the first nor the last thing in your life that does not add up. The issue of things not adding up starts from the mathematics class room, and goes on top include many other things in our life. It simply does not add up.


Mathematics used to be an easy subject for me, until a certain point in life where sums simply stopped adding up. I guess it is the same fore most of us. I guess things stopped adding up when the alphabet started creeping slowly into simple mathematics that had involved figures. That did not stop there, strange symbols, Greek alphabets and whole theories were soon added to the mix. It was no longer an operation of numbers, but functions like integration of letters, backed by some theories that were written in bizarre languages. My grandmother, is able to handle all calculations in her life without integrating anything; so I still do not understand why a certain professor insists that I need to differentiate and integrate an expressions consisting of characters beyond the scope of the keyboard that I am using. It also does not add up, top me, why mathematicians are obsessed with the letter 'x' instead of contending with the 10 digits they should operate under. Indeed, I see a situation where Massai alphabet that could soon join the Greek alphabet in this distinguished position. A certain master of mathematics told me that letters are used in mathematics to simplify things. Please- did you see me use numbers in this article to simplify anything.


That is not the only thing that does not add up, nor am I the only person with a set of things that do not follow simple mathematics logic. A visitor to this blog, Lily , says that it does not add how busy I am, given that I get time to write stuff like “25 things”. Lily, given the unemployment rate in this country, plus the people been subtracted from the payrolls daily,you will get a lot of time to write such things. Such time is also available when you are stuck in a road with more vehicles been added into the road, and a fewer number been subtracted from the same road, resulting in a traffic jam. By the way, Lily, the roads ministry, the Nairobi City Council, and other stakeholders are simply puzzled by an equation that would involve smooth flow of traffic within Nairobi city. To them, it simply does not add up. They think their gods must be crazy. Like those gods of the economists.


About the gods of the economists, if Nielsen were to measure their craziness the same way that they measure music album sales, these gods' craziness would have gone multiplatinum. Top foreign executives plus our distinguished ones have been left with ledgers that simply will not add up. Integrating, differentiating and use of bizzare expressions in this ledgers has refused to yield any miracles, since, as I just explained, the economic gods already went crazy. The only solution has been for the firms to file for bankruptcy. In some cases, foreign firms have had to add cash of governments that they can believe in into their operations, in what the governments that we can believe in call a bail out. Such expressions as bail outs are not used in sums of economies of developing countries, as the governments in this countries run economies that under normal circumstances result in negative totals if an attempt to sum them up is made.


In case the use of the term “foreign” in the above paragraph does not add up, it refers to people of a certain nationality who our prime minister has suggested should head the countries electoral body. This is due to the habit of votes cast not adding up when counted by a body headed by a Kenyan. Apparently, a Kenyan head usually integrates the voters in some areas and differentiates voters in other areas. The last time we had such a situation, we had to subtract many heads from our population and add many politicians to the government for things to add up. This has resulted in many Governmental sums not adding up.


For example, summing the number of litres that leave the Kenya Pipeline corporation does not add up to the litres of the same fuel it received. The National Cereals Boards might also require the help of mathematicians to find out why the number of maize bags that are received by millers do not add up to the ones it dispatched from its stores.


For the president, things have simply refused to add up. There is that one sum, involving calculating the size of his family, that has turned to be the proverbial pain in his backside. He has had to give several press conferences where he gives a mathematical breakdown of his family. Despite this, other Kenyans including members of the bar like one Paul Muite have claimed that the presidents Mathematical breakdown is flawed, and have gone ahead to try to sum up the members of his immediate family.


I am sure that there are many things in your life that do not add up. Take a moment and think of it. That is how complex mathematics is. What I do not know is if that still guarantees mathematicians to introduce alphabets and theories into simple sums. Hope it all adds up one day.

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