You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
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1 in 5
One in five millennials has had a Big Mac in their lives. This is an issue for the hamburger manufacturer. The company may have made $8.6 billion in the U.S. in 2015, but the fact that I, a 26-year-old, can not name that random list of crap in a Big Mac could be an existential threat for the company long term. [The Wall Street Journal]
9
And now the Australian news of the week: The most consequential trial in the history of Australia ended Thursday. Following Daniel Ricciardo’s win in the Formula One Grand Prix in Malaysia, nine Australian supporters drank in the street wearing what we in the U.S. call Speedos but the Aussies call, no joke, “budgie smugglers.” This did not go over well. They were jailed for four days but released after the nine came off as remorseful. [The National Post]
13 marijuana plants
In a major international marijuana operation bust, 13 “nearly whole” female cannabis plants have been found in the home of a northern Chinese man. The man has been dead for anywhere from 2,800 to 2,400 years, and the aforementioned room is his tomb. Yeah, you just got Twilight Zoned. [NPR]
29 percent
According to a new PRRI/The Atlantic poll, that’s the percentage of Clinton supporters who live in the town where they grew up, compared with 40 percent of Trump supporters. [The Atlantic]
$5 billion
Amount spent on the subscription marketplace, by which we mean those monthly boxes that deliver a hodgepodge of goodies — makeup, nerd crap, food — to your doorstep. What a daft business model, requiring consistent delivery to a regular subscriber. In unrelated news, you should sign up for the Significant Digits newsletter if you haven’t already, and if you have you should tell your friends. [Bloomberg]
$280 billion
Expected value of the bottled water market by 2020, bringing a new meaning to the phrase “money for nothing.” [The Guardian]
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