Pareto Principle, Stephen Covey, Math, ...
I don't know where to start. Let's just start that I've been reading Stephen Covey lately as my bedtime reading.

Way back in my early years as a math teacher, I really like to pose this 'tricky' everyday math problem to my students, usually applied When everything else fails...

There were these three boys who wanted to buy each a bike but later found out that they didn't have enough money to buy three but if they pool their money they could buy one. For the sake of easy arithmetic, let's say that each of the boy had only RM10. A bike at that time cost RM25. (Now you know how old this story is...)

So the boys pooled their money and got RM30. And voila..! enough to buy the bike. So buy the bike they did.

Once they paid for the bike, they had RM5 remainder (math : RM30 - RM25 = RM5). And they had to divide this among them three. Since these boys as I found out later didn't study mathematics, they divide the RM5 this way : Each would get back RM1. The remaining RM2 they would keep it in a safe somewhere for future bike-buying... (maybe for remp-it purposes...). And there you go, the boys were all happy with their new one bike to share.

The next day one of the boys (the leader I suppose..) brought about this scenario to the other two 'shareholders' :

"Remember guys, each one of us had RM10 in the beginning. And at the end of the day we were left with RM1 each. That means we each spent RM9. Now RM9 x 3 of us that will make it RM27. Plus the RM2 in our tabung, that will make it RM29. Now, where is the other RM 1...??"

And the other two 'shareholders' responded like all other be-puzzled shareholders would - "ye tak ye laa... ke mane ye...?"

What say you?? [So, what's this got to do with Pareto & Covey..? Wait, still more to come later...]