Reliability Theory Explained, Part 3

That jet you took last week???

You may think Lusser’s Law only applies to space shuttles and submarines, but here’s the truth: it applies to you. Every single day. 

Your car? Thousands of parts. Your smartphone? More transistors than stars in the galaxy. The jet you took to Vegas last weekend? Over six million components. 

Lusser’s Law says that if even a handful of those parts are unreliable, your entire system—your vehicle, your gadget, your plane—can fail in ways that are inconvenient at best… and deadly at worst. 

A blown tire. A faulty sensor. A broken lithium battery. Tiny cracks in massive systems can ruin your day, or they can  create tragic headlines. That’s why engineers use something called Six Sigma—a system for making sure every part is nearly perfect, so the whole thing doesn’t collapse. Like the Titan. It's basically quality control on steroids. The goal? As close to zero defects as possible. That's what my grandfather was going for, and he created a mathematical formula to help engineers that is used every day right now and into the future. Every bridge you cross. Every jet you board. Every elevator you ride. Think about it.

And next time something breaks, remember: my grandfathers,  The Man Who Calculated Death, already predicted it. (see @suzannerico on Instagram for video of this post.)