You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
9 astronauts
Nine NASA astronauts — five of whom flew on the space shuttle — have been announced as the crew of new commercial spacecrafts built by Boeing and SpaceX. Beginning next year, these crafts will head toward the International Space Station in the first manned missions from the U.S. since the shuttle program ended seven years ago. [Space.com]
18 percent of Wikipedia biographies
Only 18 percent of the biographical entries on Wikipedia are of women. A machine learning tool called Quicksilver is trying to change that, poring over news articles and academic literature to find scientists who merit inclusion on the crowd-sourced encyclopedia, and composing draft entries for them. It’s already found 40,000 such missing scientists (both men and women). [Wired]
24-point gender gap
In 2016, according to exit polls, women voted for Hillary Clinton by 13 percentage points and men voted for President Trump by 11 points — a “gender gap” of 24 points, the biggest in history. Recent, high-quality polls in the national popular vote for the House have shown a similar, and in a couple of cases even larger, gender gap. If that holds it’d be the largest gap in House races in at least 26 years. [FiveThirtyEight]
25 minutes of sleep
A recent study in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization found that having high-speed internet access causes people to lose 25 minutes of sleep per night, compared to those people without it, as that access “promotes excessive electronic media use.” I can confirm this finding, he typed, between sips of his third coffee of the day. [Motherboard]
429 executions
Michael Graczyk worked as an Associated Press reporter who, as part of his professional duties in Texas, witnessed 429 executions, “far more than any American.” He retired last month, but plans to continue covering executions as a freelancer. [The Guardian]
$160 million
The late Jerry and Rita Alter lived a frugal life in Cliff, New Mexico, population somewhere shy of 300. After they died, a painting by Willem de Kooning, the abstract expressionist master, worth an estimated $160 million, was found in their bedroom. The painting had gone missing more than three decades earlier from a museum in Arizona. For the rest of the story, I recommend you read this story from the Post. [The Washington Post]
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