The Number Field

It seems that everyone knows someone who was told they were having a boy, but ended up with a girl. Or the other way around. Typically, these statements are accompanied by detailed descriptions of how the happy parents had already painted the nursery pink and acquired a wardrobe to last until the child's fifth or sixth birthday, at least. However, I don't personally know anyone who has had this happen–it's always a friend's sister, or a distant cousin, or something like that. Not that it doesn't happen, but there must be other factors that prevent an accurate prediction, and it's not very polite to ask the person telling the story if they could dig a little deeper.

In any case, we asked our ultrasound technician how accurate her prediction would be. She told us that when she first started out, she was offended by that question, but as time has gone along, she understood that people were asking because of all the horror stories, not because they doubted her. She claimed a 100% accuracy rate, and said "If you can't tell, then you must just not be looking. It's pretty obvious, if you take your time" (or something to that effect). She backed up her words with some pretty convincing ultrasound evidence, and we have the photographic proof. We're confident in the prediction.