American Juche, or Math for the Layman

Regrettably, math has never been my strong suit. I was able to keep awake in math classes only by having my head hit the desk every few minutes as I nodded off. Needless to say, what I gained from all those years of cat napping was not a comprehensive knowledge of pluses and minuses.
Nonetheless, now an adult, I feel that I need to come to terms with this glaring weakness and do some math. Last week, I briefly mentioned North Korea's philosophy, juche – based on the "people's masses" – and how America has more "juche" (주체 in Hangul, ubberblay in Pig Latin) than any other country on the planet. The challenge I have chosen for today is to determine exactly how much "juche" the US has!
No sleeping in the back of the classroom... I am watching you!
First of all, I needed to do some research. One thing I found is that the American public has been getting more and more juche packed onto their bodies at an accelerating rate. This cool graphic demonstrates where and how this has been happening. (An explanation of this trend can be found here.) As an aside, it is interesting to note that the states which lead the way in the juche index are the so-called "red states". Maybe there is some connection between Republicans and juche?
But I digress again (this is a teaching tactic we professionals use to keep our charges awake while they are listening to lectures that would otherwise be near-death experiences).
I also discovered that the
average American is 17 lbs, or roughly 8 kg overweight. The current US population is 307,006,550 and growing (har!). Let's round that off to 300 million. Rounding off is a good technique when dealing with large numbers, since when you multiply, you won't have to "carry" so many numbers.
I never could get the "carrying" part of math... you know... "carry the two" and so on? Where was I supposed to carry it to? And what if it was a 3 or a 6? Should I carry them to the same place as the twos? That never seemed right to me. I mean, when we board a plane, we "carry on" smaller bags (the ones and twos) but the bigger bags (eights and nines) need to be checked. Of course, there is a "gray area" where some passengers (usually with a lot of juche) think their sixes and sevens should be "carried", but actually they should be "checked". This results in a lot of violent stuffing maneuvers at the overhead storage compartments that end up with flight attendants jumping off the plane via the emergency slide. And speaking of "those passengers", you know how they have a little cage at the check-in counter with a sign reading, "Does your carry-on fit in here?" They should have a seat there too with a sign saying, "Does your juche fit in here?"
Anyway...
So, rounding off the American population to 300 million and multiplying that by the average amount of juche (17 lbs or 8 kg for those of you who have not been paying close attention), we come to 5.28 billion pounds or 2.4 billion kilograms. Now THAT is a substantial amount of juche! Eat your heart out North Korea!
Still, figures like that leave us wondering things like, "What does that figure mean exactly?" It is hard for the human mind to grasp numbers with more than one or two zeros after them, partly because of the "carrying" I alluded to earlier; these are the numbers that should be "checked".
So let's put this number into "layman's terms". The height of an average Swedish man is 5'10" (178 cm) tall and of a Swedish woman 5'5" (165 cm). For these heights, the ideal weight should be 141~174 lbs (64~79 kg) for a man and 112~143 lbs (51~65 kg) for a woman. For the sake of this math exercise, let's assume that Swedes are generally not packing too much juche and are close to the ideal average in weight. Most of the Swedes I have met seem to fall into that category.
OK... the research phase is finished and now we need to do some math. If we take the top and bottom weights (har!) of an ideal Swedish man and add them together, we get what is called a "total" or a "sum". We then divide this sum by two to get an "average" (sometimes called a "mean" or, in the case of Americans, a "hippopotamus"). This is 158 lbs or 72 kgs for the ideal Swedish man. If we do the same for the women, we come up with 128 lbs or 58 kgs. Assuming that there are roughly equal numbers of men and women in Sweden, we can add the men's weight and the women's weight together and come up with another average: 143 lbs or 65 kgs.
Are you keeping up with this math here? Good!
So we can say that the average Swede weighs somewhere around 143 lbs or 65 kgs.
"What does the average weight of Swedes have to do with American juche," you ask? A very good question!
Since the US is 5.28 billion pounds or 2.4 billion kilograms overweight, we can find out (by dividing) how many Swedes that would amount to! Is that cool or what?!!
Yes, very cool! And you thought that you would NEVER need to use dividing in real life!
If we divide those numbers by the average weight of a Swede, we come up with the equivalent of around 37 million Swedes! Sweden's population, however, is only 9,059,651. So in easy-to-understand layman's terms, the US is packing the equivalent of four Swedens: two on its back butt and two on its front butt.
There! That wasn't so bad, was it?