You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
2 fish
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service said the Modoc sucker — which I thought was a villain once defeated by the Fantastic Four, but is actually a fish — will be removed from the endangered species list. It joins the Oregon chubb — which I originally pegged as a cocktail made of vegan brandy, vegan gin, vegan amaretto, vegan bitters and club soda that can’t afford Seattle prices, but is actually a fish — as the second fish to be delisted this year. [Scientific American]
3 planes
Somebody forgot three 747s at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia, and authorities would greatly appreciate it if the owner(s) stepped forward. Airport officials ran an ad in the local newspaper, with pictures of the planes, to try to find the owner. [Quartz]
4 women
Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany who has kept the Euro zone together by sheer force of will, is just the fourth woman to be the sole winner of Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. [Time]
53.7 percent
The percentage of schools that taught proper condom use to high school students in 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And just 45.5 percent of high schools hit all 16 sex education topics recommended by the CDC. At the middle school level, only 17.1 percent of schools taught all 16 topics. I went to Catholic high school, so I have no idea what this article is talking about, as I was taught sex should be avoided all-together because most people died immediately after having it. [The Daily Beast]
80 students
The norovirus is ravaging Boston College students; 30 students got sick after eating at a local Chipotle, with 80 students affected as of Tuesday. Back in my college days — which, in fairness, was 2012 — students got sick with the norovirus only after eating disgusting meal-plan food, so I guess these kids could have it worse. [The Washington Post]
85 motherfuckers
In anticipation of Quentin Tarantino’s new film, “The Hateful Eight,” my colleague Oliver Roeder counted up every profanity and act of violence in the director’s catalog. There were 85 uses of the word “motherfucker” or its plural over seven films, comprising a mere 5 percent of all swear words used. [FiveThirtyEight]
$9,850
Monthly cost of Ibrance, a new Pfizer drug that slows breast cancer growth. The Wall Street Journal got a look under the hood at the complicated process that pharmaceutical companies go through to set a price for new drugs, a delicate balancing act of maximizing market, turning a profit and making sure insurers will pay for it. The drug is forecasted to bring billions of dollars in annual revenue to Pfizer. [The Wall Street Journal]
28,815 stuffed toys
A crowd of 19,289 fans tossed 28,815 stuffed toys onto the ice of the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary for a Teddy Bear Toss event run by the Calgary Hitmen hockey team. The toys will be donated to local charities. [CBC]
$2 million
The Wu Tang Clan sold the only existing copy of “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” a new album, to an undisclosed bidder for around $2 million. Now that bidder has been disclosed, and it’s none other than loathed pharmaceutical flipper Martin Shkreli, who jacked up the price — from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill — of an anti-parasitic drug used to help people not die in agony from parasites. Donald Trump said he was “a spoiled brat,” which is like that guy watching porn on his phone while riding the subway calling someone else creepy. [Bloomberg]
$49 million
How much the super PAC that supports Jeb Bush has spent so far, and look at how far that’s got him. Right to Rise PAC raised $103 million in the first half of the year and $13 million since. It now has about $67 million in its coffers, meaning they’ve spent $49 million getting Bush to fifth place and single-digit poll numbers. If Bush’s super PAC had spent that money on buying the Wu Tang album so America could hear it, I bet he’d be polling higher. [The Washington Post]
If you haven’t already, you really need to sign up for the Significant Digits newsletter — be the first to learn about the numbers behind the news.