See my one-liner below, with documentation.

Body Mass Index, or BMI, is weight/height², but weight is in kilograms and 
height is in meters, so the units are kg/m².  We usually measure height in 
feet and inches and weight in pounds, so I wrote this little script for 
computing BMI from height in inches and weight in pounds.  I call the 
script "bmi".  Supposedly, if your BMI exceeds 30, you are obese and if it 
exceeds 25, you are overweight.  A lot of us sit around too much, so we 
are prone to gain weight and to get type-2 diabetes.  Good diet and 
exercise are critical for prevention.

I just thought you might like the little piece of awk code.  I'm too lazy 
to write out the if/else statements to get it to tell you if you are 
underweight, normal, overweight or obese, or to tell you how many pounds 
you should lose.  I might add that someday.  (I'm about 9 lbs overweight.)

Inevitably someone will point out that it doesn't distinguish fat mass 
from muscle mass, which is true.  If you are unusually muscular, or the 
opposite, you'll want to take that into account.  It turns out to 
correlate very well with harder-to-obtain measures of body fat.

Mike


---------------begin script on next line----------------
#!/bin/bash

# Computes your Body Mass Index (BMI) from height
# in inches and weight in pounds
#
# Syntax:
#
# bmi num1 num2
# 
# where num1 is height in inches and
#       num2 is weight in pounds
#
# http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/
#
# Underweight = <18.5
# Normal weight = 18.5–24.9
# Overweight = 25–29.9
# Obese = > 30


echo $1 $2 | awk '{printf("%.1f kg/m²", 703.06958*$2/$1^2)}'
--------------end script on previous line---------------