Two Dudes and Emergency Math

Wes has been studying for USMLE Step 3, which he takes next week (hurray for moonlighting!). The test has a very unusual, complex structure, and Wes has been telling me about it. In the midst of some practice questions this weekend, Wes called me into the office and asked me to look at one of the questions. See, in emergency medicine patient lore, there's these two dudes. Sketchy characters come in all the time and say they were "just walking down the street minding my own business" when all of a sudden these "two dudes," usually 6'+ and 250 lbs., jumped them. The joke is that if somebody could just find these two dudes, emergency room visits would be cut in half. Evidently, the legend of the two dudes is so strong that it even made it into USMLE questions.

Something else I learned last night with some of Wes's colleagues --when it comes to people reporting how much they've had to drink, divide men's drinks by 2 and multiply women's drinks by 2. For example, a man who claims to have had 8 drinks has probably had 4, and a woman who claims to have had 3 drinks has probably had 6. I balked at this, but it was corroborated by several physicians.