You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
34 seconds
Ronda Rousey KO’d Bethe Correia in 34 seconds in a UFC match Saturday. I think my colleague Andrew Flowers had the right of it when he said she fights like an outlier. [Deadspin]
35 percent
A new study out of the London School of Economics found that kids in the U.K. with low cognitive ability from high-income households were 35 percent more likely to grow up to be high-income earners than high-ability kids from poor families. [Gov.uk]
36 original shows
Netflix has made a massive investment in developing original content, and it appears to finally be paying off. It’s got a roster of 36 original shows in 2015 and beyond, more than perennial juggernaut HBO with 23. [Vulture]
49.7 percent
Spam accounted for 49.7 percent of email in June, which is actually the lowest it’s been since before 2003. Hear that, Gmail? Chill out. Stop putting our awesome Significant Digits newsletter in readers’ spam folder; we’re already winning this war. [Quartz]
100 percent
The trial of a Merck and NewLink Genetics vaccine for Ebola saw a 100 percent protection rate after 10 days for more than 4,000 people immunized. That’s awesome, for one, but also a handy little stat to keep in your pocket for when your anti-vaxxer friend gets into it on Facebook somewhere down the line. [CNBC]
5,700 stores
Rite Aid, which has about 4,600 drug stores, and Food Lion, which has about 1,100 locations, are each going to begin putting Cosmopolitan magazine behind blinders to reduce children’s exposure to sexuality. Now we may never truly know the exact nature of the “Sex So Hot You’ll Need to Crank the A.C.,” but I’ve narrowed it down to some combination involving a Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Torch, Everclear, welding gloves and Icy Hot. Get at it, people. [The New York Times]
$500,000
One day after it formed, MMWP12 LLC gave half a million dollars to the New Day Independent Media Committee, a group backing Ohio Gov. John Kasich for president. Business must really be booming! Or maybe someone is trying to squirrel some pseudo-anonymous cash through an intermediary to a campaign. Or MMWP12 LLC’s business could be booming too! [The Center for Public Integrity]
$2 million
Tiger Beat, the timeless magazine that distributes photographic hagiographies of pop stars, is headed for a revamp after 17 investors dumped $2 million into rebooting the magazine. [The New York Times]
$56 million
$51 billion
After a funding round led by Microsoft and Bennett Coleman & Co., Uber’s valuation is now nearly $51 billion. That seems like a big, random-ish number that means nothing to the average person — welcome to tech valuations! — but here’s the big thing: for perspective on this, Uber hit a $51 billion valuation about two years faster than Facebook did. [The Wall Street Journal]
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