Mathematical diatribe

She answered 96 per cent.

How in this world do you calculate suspicion so accurately? Maybe you can use a matrix to work out unfaithfulness. A kiss on the lips could be five per cent, then a kiss with tongues 10 per cent.

On the other end of the scale, full activity would be 100 per cent.

Try marking your own scale of indiscretions.

If you were to bet whether or not your partner is playing away, you would do well to gamble 50-50 because either ‘they is or they ain’t’.

But how do you mark feelings?

‘I am 87.25 per cent certain he slept with her and it is 43.75 per cent certain she is carrying his baby’.

Where do they find these people? Not in maths or common sense classes, that’s for sure.

I tire of those who use numbers to demonstrate everything. How many times do we hear: ‘I’m going to give it 120 per cent’?

No. If you have it all to give, you only have 100 per cent.

You could give less than your best but you cannot give more. I will illustrate.

If, say, you were a tripodelien footballer, you could give more if you were able to control the ball with all of your three legs. I calculate that to be able to give 133 per cent.

If you happen to be a two headed footballer (It still wouldn’t make a full brain) then you could give 200 per cent from the neck up. That would make the average something like 166 per cent, compared to the average man but compared to other two-headed tripodelien footballers you can only give 100 per cent, take a toe or two.

Two legged footballers with one head can only ever give 100 per cent.

We get this type of mathematical diatribe from football pundits all the time. ‘All they need to do in the second half is end up with one more goal than the other team and they will win by one goal’.

In my day, we had to learn Pythagoras’ theorem.

It did not include considering ‘if Pythagoras were to be unfaithful would he come at it from the right angle’?

Maths is very simple if you relate it to real life. If I have four apples and I eat two how many do I have left? Two of course. Simples?

But is it. This supposes we eat every last bit of an apple which most of us don’t. Let us assume the core represents 15 per cent. We only consume 85 per cent. We cannot eat 110 per cent of an apple unless there is a grub inside and he is only sleeping there and not eating any himself.

Now for your maths homework today I want you to count my words and calculate by what percentage I am under or over my 500 (somebody will).

Then I want you to write to Eddy Tor here at the Guardian and ask that I write 140 per cent of my 500 words, which is, as if by magic, 700.

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