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Significant Digits For Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016

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


2.7 inches

Australia moves 2.7 inches a year because of its position on a remarkably active tectonic plate. The country has issued a reset of its official coordinates four times in the past 50 years and will issue a fifth at the end of the year. [The New York Times]


3 radar sites

The U.S. military struck three radar sites in Yemen on Wednesday after the USS Mason and USS Ponce were targeted with cruise missiles. [U.S. Defense Department, USNI News]


4 goals

Auston Matthews, the first overall pick in the NHL draft, scored four goals in his rookie debut with the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday. He’s the first player in the modern NHL to pull that off in his debut. Oddly enough, Toronto lost the game 5-4 to the Ottawa Senators. [ESPN]


68 percent

Saudi Arabia’s crude oil revenue has fallen to 334 billion riyals this year from more than 1 trillion riyals in 2011, a 68 percent drop. That’s like if the U.S. just forgot to collect most of its taxes. [Bloomberg]


165 pounds

Amount of raw mined material required to produce an average cell phone. This makes the decision by Samsung to pull the plug on its 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7s an environmental catastrophe, given the poor state of the tech recycling system. [Motherboard]


$461 billion

A surprisingly huge chunk — at least 2.5 percent! — of global trade consists of pirated or ripped-off products. Estimates range from $461 billion to $1.8 trillion in counterfeit stuff. Which reminds me — accept no substitutes from the far inferior “Remarkable Figures” column and newsletter. [Bloomberg]


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

Walt Hickey was FiveThirtyEight’s chief culture writer.

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