You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news. I’m Oliver Roeder, a staff writer here and your humble new Significant Digits host. I also live on the internet here.
0 film cameras
Canon, which traces its history to the establishment of Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory in 1933, has sold its last film camera. It marks the first time the company hasn’t sold a film camera since it started selling one called the Kwanon. [TechCrunch]
12 minutes, 3 seconds
On Tuesday, two things happened: A New England Journal of Medicine article by Harvard researchers argued that the death toll from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico was most likely thousands higher than the official number of 64; and Roseanne Barr, the sitcom star, was fired for a racist Twitter rant. According to the watchdog group Media Matters, CNN devoted nearly five hours to discussing Roseanne, and just over 12 minutes to discussing Puerto Rico. The other cable news networks, Fox News and MSNBC, were similarly lopsided, with Fox spending just 48 seconds on the Puerto Rico study. [Media Matters]
25 percent steel tariff
The Trump administration imposed a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports from Europe, Canada and Mexico. All three announced that they would retaliate. (Feeling left out of the fun? Wage your own trade war.) [Associated Press]
30 to 50 minutes shorter
Some Thanksgivings are shorter than others. Family celebrations (or, “celebrations”) were about 30 to 50 minutes shorter in 2016 for those who crossed partisan lines for their dinners than for those eating same-party meals. This is according to a paper in Science using location data from smartphones combined with precinct-level voting results. The authors tout their findings as quantifying the private, familial effects of political polarization. [The New York Times]
51 percent of teens
Just a touch over half of American teenagers use Facebook. Yet, 95 percent of them have access to a smartphone, and 45 percent of them are online “almost constantly.” In fact, the share who use Facebook has declined by 20 percentage points since the same survey in 2014-2015. YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat top the usage list. [Pew Research Center]
$2.8 billion
President Trump’s net worth is $2.8 billion, based on a Bloomberg analysis of information from “lenders, property records, annual reports, market data and a May 16 financial disclosure.” This represents a decline of $100 million over the past year, and the second drop in as many years, thanks to decreased revenue at Trump Tower and his golf courses. [Bloomberg]
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