You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
18 percent
Percentage of legal marijuana users who ate at Taco Bell in the preceding four weeks, according to an industry study from Green Market Report and Consumer Research Around Cannabis. Forty-three percent ate at McDonald’s. [Bloomberg]
60 percent
Pivoting to video as a news site strategy sure seems like a great way to pivot to people not using your website at all: comScore data indicates that publishers that fired a bunch of writers this summer to fuel quixotic and nebulous video ambitions saw at least a 60 percent drop in traffic in August compared to August 2016. [Columbia Journalism Review]
112 TWTR points
Introducing Nate Silver’s “Trump Weekly Twitter Rage” point system. Step No. 1: Add one point for every insult made by the president from @realDonaldTrump, according to The Upshot, in the preceding seven days. Step No. 2: Add one point for every exclamation point contained in a Trump tweet in the preceding seven days. Step No. 3: That’s it, actually. The index maxed out on July 29 after a GOP health care bill failed in dramatic fashion. [FiveThirtyEight]
60,000 independent workers
Ikea (the company that sells build-it-yourself furniture) is buying TaskRabbit (the company that connects users to people who can build Ikea furniture) for an undisclosed amount. TaskRabbit has raised about $50 million since its founding and has about 60,000 independent workers on the platform. Congratulations to TäskRäbbit. [Recode]
$292,100
Median net worth for American households with college degrees, according to new data from the Federal Reserve, compared to $67,100 for those with a high school diploma. If you want to know why Americans rack up a truly ridiculous amount of debt to pay for college, well … . [Quartz]
917,000 viewers
Number of 25- to 54-year olds who tuned into Megyn Kelly’s new morning show on NBC on Monday. Still, over the course of the week (as is typical for new shows) the number of “Megyn Kelly Today” viewers steadily declined. [Business Insider]
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