[Remind-Fans] Remind & Birth Control. ;-)

[Phil Snowberger]

On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 08:38:37AM -0500, Tom Limoncelli wrote:
> For extra credit, I would have it pick a random date 9 to 18 months
> later and list it as the birthday of the child born by the
> practitioner.  No matter how good your "remind" skills are, this
> method is still the 2nd least reliable form of birth control.

The method as described is called (I think) the rhythm method, which
wikipedia gives a 9% yearly success rate at avoiding pregnancy.  The
method has been expanded in the past couple decades into a
sympto-thermal method ("STM"), that boasts higher reliability (2%
yearly, according to wikipedia) when used consistently.

Additionally, practitioners of STM are often better able to predict the
birth date than their own doctors, because they can sometimes pinpoint
the day of fertilization.

(All of the above is off-topic, since I have no idea how to do any of
the above in remind (Indeed, I've fallen off the remind horse after a
brief stint of (coerced) google calendar usage))

--Phil

-- 
Phil Snowberger -- psnowber at cse.nd.edu
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Notre Dame