You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
0.7; 24; 50,000
Huge weekend in politics! Given that you read our website, you’ve likely heard that there’s a convention happening. But here’s a quick catch up to get everyone on the same page: Sen. Tim Kaine was tapped to be Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential nominee, and the pick adds about 0.7 points to Clinton’s probability of winning the election based on historical performance of Veep nominees in their home states and Virginia’s overall importance to the board. DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has resigned less than 24 hours before the start of the convention after emails were leaked that showed the DNC working against Sanders during the Democratic primary. And finally, FiveThirtyEight is in Philadelphia along with an estimated 50,000 protestors a day, so things looks like they could get weird. [FiveThirtyEight, CNN, The Morning Call]
Relevant weeklong sidebar: It’s the Democratic National Convention! FiveThirtyEight has sent its crack political team — and also for some inexplicable reason me — to Philly, known to Giants fans like me as a seething hellmouth, to cover the events. FiveThirtyEight has its own show on ABC News Digital at 5 p.m. ET each evening of the convention, so tune in to that! I’ll be on the stream later on in the evening, so watch that too.
10 cents
Deposit amount in the state of Michigan for a recyclable can. When you return a can in Michigan to get recycled, you get 10 cents back. This is not the case in many other states, where the deposit is 5 cents. A Michigan man allegedly attempted to exploit this arbitrage opportunity by hauling upwards of 10,000 cans across the border to deposit for profit. The problem: Trying to mass import cans for redemption is illegal. He could face up to five years in prison, though legal experts are unsure if just being caught transporting the cans (rather than depositing them) is enough for a conviction. [The Guardian]
83 percent
Percentage of Americans who had seen Pokemon Go on the news recently. According to the Ipsos poll, 93 percent of people have heard about the app. [Ipsos]
22,000 acres
Size of the Sands fire in California by midday Sunday, which was 10 percent contained. [The Pacific Standard]
750,000 units
Did you know that there is still at least one company making VCRs? It would appear that that company — Funai Electric — noticed that they were still somehow making 750,000 VCRs per year and will stop doing that by the end of the month. At the format’s peak, Funai was cranking out 15 million units per year. It’s only a matter of time before a VCR maintenance, repair and resale shop opens up in Brooklyn, isn’t it? [ABC News]
$4.8 billion
Following a decision by its board of directors, Yahoo! will sell its internet and land holdings — including the stupid exclamation point I presume — to Verizon for $4.8 billion. In January 2000, the company was worth about $125 billion. [The New York Times]
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