Are square kilometres the same thing as kilometres square?

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

11 Aug 2019

Who is an African American? It is a person who is an American citizen but has African ancestry. In the same breath, who is a Kenyan Asian? This must be a citizen of an Asian county with Kenyan ancestry.

The Kenyan citizens whose ancestors came from India are not Kenyan Asians or Indians; they are Asian Kenyans or Indian Kenyans. In other words, they are Kenyans of Indian heritage; they are not Indians of Kenyan heritage.

Kenyans Asians cannot be not citizens of Kenya!

In his recent trip to Jamaica, President Uhuru Kenyatta revealed that he has some family relatives in that country. He said “my wife’s brother’s mother comes from Jamaica”. Digging deeper, it turned out that it is his brother’s wife’s mother who hailed from there.

So, what has this got to do with the world of figures? It illustrates how changing the order of words phrase can change the meaning. For example, is a metre square the same as a square metre?

A metre square is a square with sides measuring one metre each. In the same way, when we say 4 metres square, we are talking about a square whose sides are 4m.

On the other hand, a square metre is surface of any share whose area is equivalent to that of a metre square. A square with an area of 4 square metres will have sides of 2m each. Similarly, a 4 metres square has an area of 16 square metres.

Clearly, it is not possible to have a circle of four metres square. The reason is that the latter is a square, and, obviously, a square cannot be a circle at the same time!

Now, when measurements become too small or too large, it is good to change the units to something that gives a good feel of the size. One of the peculiar Kenyan habits is that our surveyors measure land in hectares yet we transact it in acres.

One hectare is approximately 2.47 acres. This is often rounded up to about 2.5 acres. As long as the area is below 30 acres or thereabouts, many people can visualise the size. But urbanites are only able to relate with fractions of acres – halves, quarters and eighths.

However, when we get to hundreds or thousands of acres, our minds simply shut down. We wouldn’t tell the difference between 2,000 acres and 20,000 acres! We are content to know that these are just very large pieces of land.

For such sizes, it is more informative to use square kilometres – or perhaps, kilometres square – in order to give a better picture. Thus, instead of saying that the Del Monte land in Kenya is 22,000 acres, it is better to convert that figure to 90 square kilometres.

This is equivalent to square area measuring approximately 9.5km by 9.5km. Suddenly we are able to visualise it in our minds. And, in any case, the surveyors map is in kilometres!