You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
248 athletes
The 2024 Olympics will be in Paris and its organizers want breakdancing there, too, as a medal sport. Paris’s proposal is to add breakdancing to climbing, surfing and skateboarding, which will debut in 2020 in Tokyo. The proposal is to have 248 athletes spread across those four sports and evenly divided between men and women. Cuts would have to be made elsewhere, however, to abide by the International Olympic Committee’s cap of 10,500 Olympians. [Associated Press]
2 percent drop
Nike’s stock price dropped 2 percent in early trading yesterday. The night before, the foot of Duke’s Zion Williamson, the nation’s top college basketball player and super-elite NBA prospect, went right through his Nike shoe and Williamson injured his knee. President Barack Obama was sitting court-side and can be seen in videos mouthing the words, “His shoe broke.” [MarketWatch]
27 percent of non-college-educated whites
A new study by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic tries to quantify the political bubbles in which Americans often live. For example, it found that 27 percent of non-college-educated whites “seldom or never” encounter people from a different political party. Only 39 percent “see political diversity within their families.” Forty-five percent of Democrats and 35 percent of Republicans would be “unhappy” with their child marrying someone of the opposite political party. And about three-quarters of interactions with someone from a different political party happen at work. [The Atlantic]
112 years ago
A species of tortoise — Chelonoidis phantasticus, or Fernandina Giant Tortoise — was thought to have been extinct for over a century, with the last member spotted 112 years ago. But a female member of the species, itself more than 100 years old, was found recently on the least-explored of the Galapagos Islands, just hanging out. [ABC News]
$5.3 million reimbursement
New York City will reimburse the Federal Emergency Management Agency $5.3 million after defrauding the agency in the aftermath of 2012’s Hurricane Sandy. The city’s Department of Transportation reported damage to its vehicles to FEMA. However, many of those vehicles had been damaged before the storm. [NPR]
Almost 14,000 more foul balls
There were almost 14,000 more foul balls hit during the most recent baseball season than there were in the 1998 season 20 years ago, an increase of 12 percent. The increase can be blamed on a number of factors: faster pitches, more breaking balls, and shrinking playing areas that punish foul balls less. And the sport’s “sluggish pace of play,” my colleague Travis Sawchik writes, can be blamed, at least in part, on all the foul balls. [FiveThirtyEight]
Love digits? Find even more in FiveThirtyEight’s book of math and logic puzzles, “The Riddler.” I hope you dig it.
If you see a significant digit in the wild, please send it to @ollie.
From ABC News: