Mathematics and love - the missing foundational duo in underdeveloped nations

By Seshie, Stanley


February is now the month of celebrating mathematics and love in
Ghana. For the commonweal of the Nation, let us become field
participants and not just spectators to infuse meaning into this
celebration.


Nations celebrate mathematics and love because they have internalized
them, and institutionalized their importance in everyday interactions
for progress. They define their service in pursuit of nation building.
Properly understood, mathematics and love are arguably the
architecture of all developed and developing Nations.


Politics is dealing with numbers. More than garnering the fifty
percent plus one to winning election, it is how to overcome number of
challenges to provide number of opportunities for the people.
Fundamentally, where mumbers are mathematics is.


In addition, politics is solving problems. Where solving problem for
the people is the onus, love is the means to actualizing it.
Therefore, the marriage between mathematics and love in nation
building is too important not to realize and consciously
institutionalize.


Essentially, governnance is a business of making consequential
judgements. The policy formulation and implementation must not only
improve the educational, economical, health, agricultural,
infrastructural and other developmental sectors of the nation in the
now, it must equally outline the future course of the nation to be
binding pragmatically.

That is the predictive power the consequential judgements necessary
made in the midst of uncertainties stemming from innumerable
challenges carries within it. Hence, it matters that the judgement is
right. To get it right requires a kind of practical thinking.


Of course, we need to rely on information to do that. What is
information? Information is a resolution of uncertainty. However,
statistics is a measure of uncertainty. Therefore, we are back to the
indispensable practical cultivation of quality statistical thinking in
making judgement as individuals.


In practice then, no one is actually different from the professional
statistician going through different sorts of complicated and numerous
data to derive the best and likely correct information to undergird
his actions. Nationally, it is the quality statistical knowledge
undergirding formulated policies that imparts meaning and order to the
seemingly disorder of needs of the people. Get it wrong and produce
rearranged prejudices as policies.


Now let us look at the canker of corruption in the light of
mathematics and love. Corruption is difficult to define concisely.
However, implicit in corruption is the comparison of what is available
to use, the number of things it should be used for as well as the
number of potential beneficiaries. When these numbers overwhelm the
person in charge, ill thinking sets in.


In the words of James Williams, most of us believe we are thinking
whilst we are just rearranging our own prejudices. A rearranged
prejudices lead to formulation of wrong policies. Any thinking devoid
of doing things right belies any mathematical background. Because
mathematics is not just about numbers, it is fundamentally about
solving problems via identification of patterns in the labyrinth of
challenges. Emotionally, love plays similar roles in solving problems
for the people.


It then sufffices to say that corruption is rife because we do not see
and apply the greatness of mathematics and love in our everyday
interactions in nation building. It takes thinking and acting right
about relations to excavate hidden patterns of corruption of any kind
for minimization if not elimination. That is mathematics and love
respectively in action for nation building because they are both about
solving problems.


When we failed to internalize and institutionalize these concepts as a
people, nation building becomes chasing a mirage. The inevitable
result is disservice to the people and nation. This devolves into
leadership and followership crisis. Underdevelopment becomes the
canopy under which the suffering majority live with few perpetrators
kept apart by democracy.


The Mathematician, Michael Polanyi, defines problem as a search for
solution. It then follows that the search for solution could become a
burden to race with the wrong thinking and attitude as a people. To
us, our the solutions are outside ourselves. In fact, they also lie
beyond the natural realm. So that what others do by themselves and
naturally, we want outsiders to do for us and supernaturally These are
the assisted self-inflicted burden of our race no one wants to admit.


In that regard, we can also begin to see clearly why as Africans we
are yet to climb the development ladder satisfactorily. It is because
for a long time, we have not individually internalized let alone
institutionalized the importance of mathematics and love in our nation
building efforts. These are human and natural concepts with
"unreasonable effectiveness" that all races have married for
development. Let us also centralize them. Let service to our
motherland be an embodiment and reflection of mathematics and love in
action.

Email: seshiehanku@gmail.com

Whatsapp: 0248412308