Hey, I was in the first year of ECE 189 back in '03 (also in the first graduating class of their newfangled CE major). Very cool class.

And hey: my project was a portable* laptop drive-based MP3 player and five years later, I'm working one one again. But this time it's for a well-known company in Cupertino...

* "Portable" MP3 player turned out to be about half the size of a lunchbox. Don't forget mounting holes in your PCB: other mounting solutions are difficult and large!

The number is even more meaningless when you consider what a "failure" is (as pointed out my Feynman after Challenger). We only consider a shuttle mission a failure if the situation gets so FUBAR that the vehicle explodes.

But all those times that the O-rings showed wear that implied they weren't operating as designed? Not considered failures.

Just because the thing took off and landed again without killing anyone doesn't mean that it was working as designed and certainly doesn't mean it was operating safely.