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Significant Digits For Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018

You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.


8 overtime games

There have been eight overtime games already this NFL season, the most to this point in more than 15 years. There have also already been two ties, making this only the fourth multi-tie season since 1974. The main reason, according to my colleague Neil Paine: parity across the league. [FiveThirtyEight]


1.6 percent drop

Millennials, the media would like you to know, are serial killers. Victims include casual dining chains, starter homes, napkins, cereal, bar soap and golf. The latest reported casualty: American cheese. Sales of processed cheese like Kraft Singles and Velveeta, for example, are projected to drop 1.6 percent this year. I am technically a millennial — I won’t bore you with my demographic argument against that fact right now — and I’m proud to say that I am doing more than my part to keep processed cheese a booming industry. [Bloomberg]


5,000 terrorism cases

Christopher Wray, the FBI director, told a Senate committee that the bureau is currently investigating a whopping 5,000 terrorism cases, about 1,000 of which involve homegrown violent extremists. [ABC News]


$69 billion merger

The Justice Department approved, subject to some conditions, the $69 billion-with-a-b merger of the retail pharmacy CVS and the health insurance company Aetna. It’s a deal that “could potentially transform the health-care industry,” writes the Post. [The Washington Post]


$56 billion in weapons

American companies sold $55.6 billion worth of weapons to foreign countries in the past fiscal year, according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. This is up 33 percent from the year before. The head of that group attributes the increase to the Trump administration’s “push for foreign sale policy reforms.” [The Hill]


6 months in prison

Richard Pinedo, an American who pleaded guilty to identity fraud related to Russian trolling, was sentenced to six months in prison and six months in home confinement. It’s the longest sentence yet in Robert Mueller’s investigation into meddling in the 2016 election. [Politico]


Love digits? Find even more in FiveThirtyEight’s new book of math and logic puzzles, “The Riddler.” It’s in stores now! I hope you dig it.

If you see a significant digit in the wild, please send it to @ollie.

Oliver Roeder was a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied game theory and political competition.

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