>>They can be useful for aggregation in historical tables, I will grant you that. But not in tables used every day for normal business use. It's asking for trouble. And it's asking for trouble in historical tables if the number isn't right.
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>>What is WIC?
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>WIC stands for "Women, Infants, and Children"
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>It's run by USDA (specifically by the Food and Nutrition Service). Prenatal women, infants, and children under the age of five who qualify (usually household income under 175% of poverty level) are given vouchers (or a smart card) that they can use to redeem at grocery stores or farmer markets for certain foods.
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>For infants, approved infant formulas from Ross or Meade Johnson or whichever infant formula vendor has the contract for that state. For children, things like orange juice, certain fruits and vegetables, certain cereals, peanut butter, etc. And for prenatal women, eggs, milk, certain cereals. I haven't worked in WIC in a long time so I'm sure things have changed, but that's the basics of it.
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>The idea is that spending a certain amount of money for prenatal women and young children will prevent spending more later on illnesses directly related to malnutrition. Plus, when you get a pregnant woman or a young child into the health clinic for WIC screening, you can also get them into other services provided by the county health department. I worked in WIC for roughly four years and I know the program works. There is an air of fiscal accountability in the program, and while no program is perfect, WIC generally works. I still donate money to the program because I believe that no infant or child (nor a woman carrying a child) in this country should go to bed malnourished.
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>My biggest regret in my career was leaving Georgia WIC in 1993. I had built all the major apps that asked me to build, and while they wanted to keep me on, I left. I shouldn't have. For a data person, WIC was a dream.

Good for you. You are getting pats on the back from me with alarming regularity these days ;-)

My biggest regret was leaving Kraft (Kraft-General Foods at the time, a corporate match made in hell) after only a year or so there. I was used to a loosey goosey environment and KGF was the opposite. They had rules for everything, right down to how big your office or cubicle was based on pay grade or how much you could display on your cubicle walls. I should have sucked it up and adjusted. The people were tremendous. I had one woman reporting to me who had a Harvard MBA and several others who could have been hired by any company in the country. If only we could unwind time.