Subdividing a parcel of land among nine people

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

10 December 2023

I am old enough to remember the time when the standard measurements for corrugated roofing iron sheets (mabati) was changed from the imperial to the metric system. Before the change, there were five sizes available: 6-foot, 7ft, 8ft, 9ft and 10ft. These were replaced with just three options: 2m, 2.5m and 3m.

The big challenge was that building artisans (fundis) would measure the spacing of the roofing rafters and purlins using the old standard length of the iron sheets. Luckily, the metric measurements resulted with significant savings on the quantity of timber used on the roof, consequent, adoption of the new system happened fairly quickly.

For many decades, land surveyors in Kenya have been working in the metric system (metres and hectares) but, for some unknown reason, the public still transacts in the imperial system (feet and acres). Perhaps it is because there is no financial motivation as was the case with roofing iron sheets.

In addition, the fact that the words acre and hectare appear phonetically similar does not help. Indeed, there are many people who think (wrongly) that these are the same thing; that “acre” is just the shortened form of “hectare”!

That was my first thought when I got this question from the internet social media: “If 9 people are to share equally a piece of land measuring 3.95 acres, what would each get? Will each of the 9 portions be equal to, or greater than, a 100 x 100 plot?”.

Now this is a simple arithmetic problem: you simply divide 3.95 by 9. The answer is 0.438 acre. The question then is whether this greater a 100ft-by-100ft plot. No arithmetic is needed to get the answer!

The 100ft-by-100ft plot is commonly (but erroneously) referred to as a quarter-acre. A quarter is the fraction ¼ which, in decimal format is 0.25. Looking at the result above, 0.438, it is much bigger than 0.25 – indeed it is closer to 0.5, a half, than to a quarter. Therefore, we conclude straight away that each of the nine people would get a plot much larger than the 100ft-by-100ft.

But why would anyone ask this question? Don’t they have a calculator? I think the reason is that the person who asked mistakenly thought that one quarter is equal to 0.4. Looking at the land size (3.95 acres) and the number of people sharing (9, which is approximately equal to 10), it is easy to see that each gets about 0.4 acre. But, as we have seen, that’s not correct.