You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
1 new member
NATO announced Wednesday it will invite Montenegro, a nation of roughly 600,000, to join its ranks, a move that’s delighting Montenegrins, infuriating Russians, and confusing Americans who are just learning that there is a country called Montenegro. Welcome to NATO, Montenegro, we hope you enjoy the North Atlantic trade. [The New York Times]
12+
The story is developing this morning, but there was another raid on FIFA officials who were staying in a Swiss hotel! Authorities anticipate more than a dozen people connected to international soccer’s governing body will be charged with corruption-related crimes. [The New York Times]
15-minute drive
Kevin Wells, an English photographer, gave Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav, Chuck D and others a crucial lift to a gig in Sheffield in his Ford Focus when the rappers’ cab left without them. The 15-minute drive not only got the band to the venue in time but also produced probably the end-all dinner party story for Wells. [NPR]
32 percent
A study published in the journal Acta Neuropathologica found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in 32 percent of men who had participated in contact sports in their youth. In the control group, no one had signs of the disease. [Yahoo News]
55.5 percent
Response rate to a labor force survey in the U.K., down from 76.5 percent in 2003. As a guy who pays his rent by doing stuff with numbers, I really can’t emphasize enough how crucial it is that people tell pollsters what they think. If you don’t, we won’t get a reliable picture of society — a concern U.K. statisticians are trying to get out in the open. [The Wall Street Journal]
60 percent
Hillary Clinton expanded her lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders in a new Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday, taking 60 percent of Democratic support to Sanders’s 30 percent, compared to a 53/35 breakdown in early November. [Quinnipiac]
351 mass shootings
According to the crowdsourced Mass Shootings Tracker project, that’s how many U.S. incidents where four or more people were injured or killed in a shooting this year as of Nov. 27. That’s up from 2014, and up since last week following a shooting Wednesday in San Bernardino, California, that left at least 14 people dead. [FiveThirtyEight]
1,000 convictions
According to leaked documents, since the 1990s police officers in Alabama related to a neo-confederate group have been planting drugs on black men. About 1,000 wrongful convictions have resulted, according to the documents from the Alabama Justice Project. [Henry County Report via The Week]
1,100 dinosaurs
A museum 300 miles away from Beijing has amassed the world’s largest dinosaur collection, a noble goal if there ever was one. The Tianyu Museum of Nature has about 1,100 dinosaur fossils, which are the next-coolest thing to actual dinosaurs, which are the coolest thing. [The New York Times]
185,345 background checks
People went out to buy lots and lots of guns on Black Friday. The FBI reported running 185,345 background checks for gun sales on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I would normally make a reference to “A Christmas Story” here, but I’m kind of emotionally exhausted from two mass shooting in six days, so I’ll sit it out. [The Associated Press]
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