Welcome to Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
31.2 percent
The percentage of international students studying in the U.S. in 2015 who were from China. In 2006, China’s students accounted for 11.1 percent of the international students’ contributions towards tuition, fees, and expenses while in 2014 that figure was 31.8 percent. [The Wall Street Journal]
46 percent
It’s going to be the University of North Carolina and Villanova in the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament championship game tonight. Our model has Nova as the slight underdogs, with a 46 percent chance to win the tourney. That is also the probability I win a considerable amount of money from the FiveThirtyEight office pool, so let’s go Wildcats, my ConEd bill just came. [FiveThirtyEight]
276,000
Number of pre-orders for the Tesla Model 3 as of end-of-day Saturday, according to the car company’s CEO Elon Musk. According to Musk, that puts demand at — at least — double Tesla’s expectations. The Model 3 is Tesla’s attempt to bring an electric vehicle to the market that is more affordable to consumers than their current offerings. [@elonmusk, Engadget]
$52.3 million
Domestic haul for “Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice” in its second weekend at the box office, which is a 68.4 percent drop from the previous weekend. According to Box Office Mojo’s reckoning, that makes it the all time fifth-largest drop for a movie that opened above $100 million domestically. [Box Office Mojo]
$155 million
Amount investigators believe was transferred from 1Malaysia Development Bhd., a state development fund, to Red Granite Pictures, a Hollywood movie studio, in 2012. Red Granite raised of $100 million to make “The Wolf of Wall Street,” but according to the Wall Street Journal there is no evidence the Malaysian fund saw any of gross from the movie. [The Wall Street Journal]
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