Oh, I get this point. If you have a sufficiently large amount of data an you monitor the errors and your software gets better and better even low probability cases will happen and will stand out.

But this is sort of the march of nines.

My knee jerk reaction to blaming ECC is "naaah". Mostly because it's such a convenient scapegoat. It happens, I'm sure, but it would not be the first explanation I reach for. I once heard someone blame "cosmic rays" on a bug that happened multiple times. You can imagine how irked I was on the dang cosmic rays hitting the same data with such consistency!

Anyways, I'm sorry if my tone sounded abrasive, I, too, have appreciated the discussion.

:-) never forget Occam’s razor !

No you were not abrasive at all - I’ve learned to assume good faith in forum conversations.

In retrospect I should have started by giving the context ( march of 9s is a good description) actually, which would have made everything a lot clearer for everyone.