Lost At Sea

Our assignment was to prioritize a list of items that we would have in a hypothetical situation where we were lost at sea. We first prioritized the items individually, and then as a team. After that, we compared our rankings to the coast guard’s rankings.

My Rankings:

1.       A 25 liter container of water

2.       A case of army rations

3.       A shaving mirror

4.       A sextant

5.       A fishing kit

6.       20 square feet of opaque plastic sheeting

7.       15 ft of nylon rope

8.       A quantity of mosquito netting

9.       A 10 liter can of oil/petrol mixture

10.   Maps of the pacific ocean

11.   A floating seat cushion

12.   A quantity of mosquito netting

13.   2 boxes of chocolate bars

14.   A can of shark repellent

15.   A small transistor radio

I did have a tough time choosing some but I rationalized and came up with good arguments for each one and then chose based on those reasons. I chose food and water as the highest because that is what you need to survive and that is a priority. I chose the radio as last because you couldn’t talk to anyone with it, and you won’t be able to pick up an AM/FM signal and if you could what would you use it for?

As a team, our lists were fairly close. Some items had a great differential in rankings, but we acknowledged each other’s reasons and compromised. Something that we all agreed on was that water should come first followed by food. We worked together well in my opinion. One thing we disagreed on was that the shaving mirror would be important. I thought it should be number 3 and they thought it should be number 12.

The biggest surprise when we saw the expert list was that water was lower than we thought it should be. Other than that, our lists were pretty close to the experts list. I think experiential data would be more valid, because it comes from the combined experience and judgment of peers.