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Significant Digits For Monday, April 27, 2015

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5 high schools

The Carroll County school system in Georgia will begin randomly drug-testing students in the system’s five high schools at the rate of about 80 per month. [WSB-TV]

At least 10 instances

NBC’s internal investigation has turned up at least 10 instances of embellishment or exaggeration by anchor Brian Williams, according to a CNN report. Williams is currently serving a six-month suspension from NBC News after questions were raised about his retellings of an incident that took place during the Iraq War. [CNN]

28 campuses

The for-profit Corinthian Colleges announced that it is shutting down its 28 remaining campuses. The company has been accused by the U.S. Department of Education and the California attorney general of inflating student job-placement figures. [Los Angeles Times]


40 percent

Only about 40 percent of 2010 law school graduates are working at law firms, down from 60 percent of the class of 2000, according to a new study. [The New York Times]

1,500 people

Approximate population of Mount Everest’s base camp at peak times each year. The base camp was hit with an avalanche after the earthquake in Nepal over the weekend, and those stranded on the mountain are in an increasingly perilous position. [The Washington Post]

$25 million

Amount transferred from the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, a charity founded by a Canadian mining businessman, to the Clinton Foundation. [The Washington Post]


$41,797,550.16

How much one woman was told she won from a video penny slot machine in 2011. It was a glitch — she only won $1.85. The woman sued — and lost, because the machine’s maximum output is only supposed to be $10,000. The house always wins. [Ars Technica]

$1.08 billion

The Romance Writers of America’s estimate of how much the genre made in 2013. The genre is unique in the industry — fundamentally meritocratic (fans regularly become writers themselves) and a huge moneymaker for a beleaguered printing business. [Maclean’s]

About $4 billion

How much cash was squirreled away in the Federal Reserve’s Cold War bunker in the 1970s, hopefully enough to get the economy going again after the big boom. [Gizmodo]

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And, as always, if you see a significant digit in the wild, tweet it to me @WaltHickey.

Walt Hickey was FiveThirtyEight’s chief culture writer.

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