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Significant Digits For Friday, Dec. 9, 2016

You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.


10 percent

Portland has passed a tax that targets companies where the CEO makes 100 times as much money or more than the average employee. City businesses pay a tax of 2.2 percent of net income, but companies where the CEO makes more than 100 times as much will be assessed a further 10 percent tax, and if they make more than 250 times as much the penalty is a further 25 percent tax. [CBC]


5,000 patacas

Casino stocks were sent tumbling after China capped the amount of money UnionPay customers can withdraw from a Macau ATM to 5,000 patacas, or around $626. Macau is an immensely important gambling site that has seen worldwide investment. [Bloomberg]


97,000

It’s not just bees: Giraffes are dying at an alarming rate. The giraffe population is down to 97,000 in 2015, down from 155,000 in 1985. [BBC]


£2.4 million

In the U.K., weekly sales of vinyl records exceeded those of digital downloads last week. Vinyl sales amounted for £2.4 million while downloads had £2.1 million in sales. [The Independent]


11 million

Number of copies of “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” sold, which is ridiculous. [Mental Floss]


$3.8 billion

Google’s search, Android, Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Cloud, and Pixel made $26.8 billion in operating income last fiscal year. They’re paying for a number of “moonshot” programs: Nest, Verily, Access, X, Sidewalk Labs, Jigsaw, DeepMind, and Calico cumulatively lost $3.8 billion. [Bloomberg]


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Walt Hickey was FiveThirtyEight’s chief culture writer.

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