Tasks not validating?

Okay I will take a stab at this...if you look at one of your tasks like this one http://einsteinathome.org/workunit/85390403 you will see at the top the name of the task and some other details. Those other details are what you are looking for, the first part says "minimum quorum 2" this means that it will take at least 2 people to crunch that one task before it can be validated and the credits awarded. The next part to look at is "initial replication 2" that means that the task was sent to 2 different computers for crunching. The next thing to look at is "max # of error/total/success tasks 20, 20, 20" and that means that the task COULD be sent to up to 20 different computers before the project will mark it as bad and give up on it. All this means that your initial questions answer is 'it depends'. Down lower it says "22 Oct 2010 8:31:32 UTC 5 Nov 2010 8:31:32 UTC" this is the date it was sent to the other pc, better known as your 'wingman', and the date it is due back. It was sent to both your pc and the other persons pc the same day, some people, like you in this case, return units right away, some people have larger caches and return them just before the deadline. If the deadline is missed the project will automatically resend the unit to another pc and the wait begins again. If you click on the other persons computer number you will see that they are routinely returning units in an "Average turnaround time 7.15 days". If either one of you does not come up with the 'right' numbers the unit will be sent out again. The right numbers are based on a complicated formula that says that the numbers must be statistically similar enough before the credits will be granted, each project does this differently.