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Significant Digits For Tuesday, April 7, 2015

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$1.90 per pound

How much Buffalo Wild Wings pays for chicken wings, up from $1.36 per pound a year ago. [Bloomberg Business]

3 to 4 times faster

Fingernails grow three to four times faster than toenails. What gives? Frequent use of the fingers could stimulate faster nail growth, but the jury is still kind of out here. [io9]

10 percent

It feels odd that it has to be said, but it’s not a great idea to purchase human breast milk on the Internet. A study in the journal Pediatrics found 10 percent cow’s milk in nearly a tenth of the samples it examined. [USA Today]

40 percent

Percentage of Internal Revenue Service employees who will be eligible to retire within the next four years. The agency is looking for an infusion of fresh blood, aiming for new employees younger than 30. [Bloomberg Business]

43 schools

New York City’s largest network of charter schools is Success Academy, which by the end of next year will have 43 schools. A proposal from Gov. Andrew Cuomo could eventually bring that total to 100 schools, making the charter school network bigger than the second-largest public school district in the state. [The New York Times]


45 percent

While California has been the focus of coverage of the drought in the West, northern neighbor Oregon is also suffering from drought conditions across 45 percent of the state. [Statesman Journal]

116 years old

The world’s oldest person, Gertrude Weaver, died in Arkansas Monday after holding the title for less than a week. [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette]

44 million

Number of Americans who get a physical each year. There’s some evidence that annual checkups are too frequent. [NPR]


$1 billion

The latest startup to become a “unicorn” — meaning it has a $1 billion valuation, something that used to be rare — is Razer, a company that specializes in computer accessories for gaming. [Fortune]

279 billion euros

That’s the Greek estimate for reparations from Germany for Nazi occupation during World War II. Greece is seeking to collect on debts as it contends with its own after 240 billion euros worth of bailouts from the EU and IMF. Germany says it paid Greece 115 million deutschmarks in 1960. [Reuters]


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Walt Hickey was FiveThirtyEight’s chief culture writer.

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