Is 99.9% Good Enough?

I found this interesting bit on the web.

Statistics are interesting things.

If we accept 99.9% accuracy as being ok then:-

* 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.
* 114,500 mismatched pairs of shoes will be shipped/year.
* 18,322 pieces of mail will be mishandled/hour.
* 2,000,000 documents will be lost by the IRS this year.
* 2.5 million books will be shipped with the wrong covers.
* Two planes landed at Chicago's O'Hare airport will be unsafe every day.
* 315 entries in Webster's Dictionary will be misspelled.
* 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions will be written this year.
* 880,000 credit cards in circulation will turn out to have incorrect cardholder information on their magnetic strips.
* 103,260 income tax returns will be processed incorrectly during the year.
* 5.5 million cases of soft drinks produced will be flat.
* 291 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly.
* 3056 copies of tomorrow's Wall Street Journal will be missing one of the three sections... now that's a real problem!!!

Going North to Alaska

I am currently on deployment with the National Disaster Medical Assistance Team participating in a cold weather field training exercise in Anchorage, Alaska. Our team, North Carolina-1, is one of many medical teams based throughout the US on behalf of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

I arrived in Anchorage, Alaska Friday evening following a full day of travel. Because Alaskan time is 4 hours behind EST, we enjoyed dinner at 1:15am (EST) but at a slightly more reasonable local time of 9:15pm.

There are 160 doctors, nurses, medics, logistical personnel and one chaplain moving around the 720 acre wilderness land preserve under the care of the US Bureau of Land Management

The training group consists of teams from Minnesota, Washington, Massachuttes, Florida, Alaska and North Carolina. Amazingly the various teams have come together well and we have learned from one another. Our friends from the north (Boston) are doing much better communicating as they have realized that many words have more than one syllable. They are learning to actually enjoy the art of talking as they seem to enjoy each word like one enjoys a nice cigar. Try as we might, it's going to take more than just a few days to coach them on the proper use of the English language.

Hoping to experience the vast coldness of an Alaskan winter, we were a bit disappointed when the mercury registered a tropical 32 degrees upon our arrival. The past two days have offered us cool temps but nothing to cause a moose to shiver.

While the weather has been unusually warm for an Alaskan winter, the scenic landscape has been a treat. As we exit the warehouse that serves as our gathering place we are greeted by snow-capped mountains. Each day's short-lived afternoon sun adds to the splendor of the landscape as it causes the mountains to come alive as the glistening white snow contrasts with their grey rocky faces.

Following a full day of lectures on various medically related topics and a simulation exercise complete with volunteers playing the roles of victims, we were treated to a dinner of native cuisine. The Alaska DMAT, who have served as our generous hosts, prepared our evening meal. I have now eaten caribou sausage, dried salmon, grilled salmon, halibut and moose meat balls. I passed on the moose spaghetti sauce because I had eaten too much caribou.

We've been told that seeing a moose is as common as seeing a squirrel in North Carolina, but so far the closest I've come to seeing a moose was this evening as I passed through the serving line at dinner. I'm thinking that seeing cooked moose is not nearly as exciting as seeing one in the wild. I'll keep the camera at the ready so I can capture the experience in the event that Bullwinkle comes out to play.

Stay tuned in the days to come as I share more about our wonderful wilderness adventure.
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