[isleyaardvark]

The example I heard was to picture the Challenger shuttle, and the O-rings used worked 99% of the time. Well, what happens to the failure rate when you have 6 O-rings in a booster rocket, and you only need one to fail for disaster? Now you only have a 94% success rate.

[godelski]

IIRC the Challenger o-ring problem was much more deterministic. That the flaw was known and caused by the design not considering the actual operational temperature range. Which, I think there's a good lesson to learn there (and from several NASA failure): the little things matter. It's idiotic to ignore a $10 fix if the damage would cost billions of dollars.

But I still think your point is spot on and that's really what matters haha