You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
1.92 points
FiveThirtyEight’s Oscar race model tracks the lead-up to the Academy Awards and assigns points to nominees based on picking up prizes at earlier, historically predictive awards shows. This past Saturday, Alejandro González Iñárritu, the director of “The Revenant,” won his second consecutive Directors Guild of America award. In doing so, he rocketed to the lead in the race for best director at the Oscars, and also pushed his film to the top of the heap in the best picture category with 1.92 points. The win made a two-film best picture race into a three-film best picture predictive nightmare, with “The Revenant,” “The Big Short” and “Spotlight” all legitimate contenders with strong institutional support for the prize. [FiveThirtyEight]
4 hours
Chipotle Mexican Grill will close every one of its restaurants today for four hours to talk to employees about food safety in a companywide meeting. [WDBJ]
7th biggest upset
The Denver Broncos defeated the Carolina Panthers last night in the Super Bowl after a pitched defensive battle. Carolina was favored in the event, with Denver only a 41.5 percent chance of victory. This makes it the seventh-biggest upset in Super Bowl history according to the FiveThirtyEight Elo model. [FiveThirtyEight]
14.6 percent
We are a day away from the New Hampshire primary election, and none other than Donald J. Trump is heavily favored to win with a projected 27.7 percent of the vote. It’s the race for second place here that is interesting, with Gov. John Kasich a surprising contender for the silver medal: he’s projected to get 14.6 percent of the vote, which as someone who has been paying nowhere near as much attention as I probably should be was kind of surprising! He still trails Sen. Marco Rubio’s projected vote share — 17 percent — but it’s worth seeing how this shakes out over the next few days. [FiveThirtyEight]
20 drugs
An analysis of 3,000 brand-name prescription drugs found that prices were increasing across the board. About 400 of the brand-name drugs studies saw their price increase 9.9 percent on average since December. When it comes to dramatic rises in prices, those aren’t that rare: Since December, 2014, 60 drugs saw their prices at least double, and 20 saw prices at least triple. [Bloomberg]
600 to 900 buffalo
The U.S. government, presumably for old time’s sake but also to keep numbers manageable, annually authorizes the culling of 600 to 900 buffalo from Yellowstone’s herd, which numbers about 4,900 strong. The event is slated to begin on Feb. 15. [Fusion]
1.26 million
According to data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service analyzed by the Humane Society, 1.26 million animal corpses resulting from pleasure killing, or “trophies” as the sport hunting community calls them, were imported into the U.S. from 2005 to 2015. That’s a rate of 345 per day. Like most things regarding U.S. imports, many of those came from Canada (508,325 trophies — thanks for the animal bodies, neighbor!), but the runner up was South Africa with 383,982 trophies. [National Geographic]
2 million
More than 2 million people have been tased by the cops in the past decade. This is an issue, according to a new report published in Criminology & Public Policy that found people who have recently been shocked with a taser are more likely to waive their Miranda rights than people who have not. [Ars Technica]
$5.2 million
“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” which mashed up the novel from 200 years ago and the monster fad from six years ago, did not have a great opening weekend at the box office, pulling in a mere $5.2 million and coming in behind the third installment in the Kung-Fu Panda cinematic experience and a Coen Brothers movie, “Hail Caesar.” [Variety]
$278.3 million
Amount of money Anheuser-Busch Inbev spent on Super Bowl ads over the past decade, according to Kantar Media. The top five advertisers were responsible for 31 percent of the total ad spending, and Anheuser-Busch Inbev is the top advertiser of any of them. [The Wall Street Journal]
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