You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
3 free suits
Jos. A. Bank’s famous “buy one suit, get three suits free” sale will end for the final time this coming Sunday. Men’s Wearhouse bought the company in March of 2014. [CNN Money]
6 percentage points
In an average of six polls, that’s how much support swung in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s favor in the Democratic primary since the first debate. She’s got the largest bump of any other contenders, and with Jim Webb and Joe Biden out already, and Lincoln Chafee circling the drain, this may come out to be a rather good week for the Clinton camp. [FiveThirtyEight]
7 arson attempts
Someone set fire to the doors of the Shrine of St. Joseph church, “marking the seventh attempt to burn a place of worship in the St. Louis area in two weeks.” Listen, I’m no Encyclopedia Brown, but I feel like it may be a good time for police to start, you know, running patrols past churches. Just a hunch. [The Kansas City Star]
11 cents
The FCC is cracking down on companies that ripoff inmates on phone fees, capping the per-minute cost of a call at 11 cents for prisons and 14 to 22 cents for jails. [The Huffington Post]
30 percent
Percentage of the American workforce that is either self-employed (10 percent) or employed by someone who is self-employed (20 percent) in 2014. Both groups together account for approximately 44 million jobs. [Pew Research Center]
50 pots of coffee
A Tumblr run by the National Archives about cool documents turned up a real gem this week: When Dick Cheney was deputy chief of staff for President Gerald Ford, he wrote a very terse memo ratting out Donald Rumsfeld and his team of nine for consuming $100 worth of coffee per month, which breaks down to 50 pots per week. Lightweights, all of them. [Today’s Document via Mental Floss]
90 percent
Vladimir Putin has a 90 percent approval rating in Russia, according to a state-run pollster that is totally legit and in no way influenced by Vladimir Putin, who controls the state that runs it. [The Guardian]
41,710 bite wounds
Number of people who went to the emergency room in the U.S. in 2012 with bite wounds inflicted by another human. [The Washington Post]
200,000 riders
The Port Authority Bus Terminal handles about 200,000 people per day (one being me). But the terminal is more than 50 years old and is completely unable to handle increased traffic. The Port Authority’s board voted to investigate ways to replace the terminal. My favorite story is the time I saw the guy using the Internet terminals at the pizza joint in the south building to watch pornography during rush hour. Do you have any Port Authority Bus Terminal stories? Did it ever get weird? Send ’em over to @WaltHickey, we have to memorialize this awful scrap-heap while it’s still around. [ABC 7 New York]
$5 billion
Amazon had an earnings report drop Thursday that exceeded investor expectations, sending the stock shooting up. Since lots of CEO Jeff Bezos’ wealth is tied up in that stock, he added an additional $5 billion to his net worth, making him the third richest American. [Business Insider]
If you haven’t already, you really need to sign up for the Significant Digits newsletter — be the first to learn about the numbers behind the news.