You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
5 years
Former Democratic congresswoman Corrine Brown was sentenced to five years in federal prison Monday after being convicted of 18 counts of corruption related to using a children’s charity as a piggy bank. [First Coast News]
85 percent
President Trump announced yesterday he will dramatically shrink the size of two Utah national monuments, potentially opening them up to energy exploration. The decision shrinks Bears Ears national monument by 1.1 million acres, or about 85 percent of its designation, and shrinks Grand Staircase-Escalante by 800,000 acres, or 46 percent of it. [The Washington Post]
354 candidates
Women in particular have been throwing their hats in the ring for elected office lately, with 354 female House candidates (291 Democrats and 63 Republicans) and 38 female Senate candidates (25 Democrats and 13 Republicans) registered so far. It’s important to contextualize this: There are four times as many women challenging House incumbents this time compared to the same period in 2015, and 10 times the number of women challenging Senators compared to 2012 and 2014. Gosh, wonder what prompted all this. [The New York Times]
$88.3 million
CVS Health Corp. is trying to buy Aetna, and the insurer’s CEO is poised for a lucrative exit of the deal goes through. Mark Bertolini could walk away with $88.3 million if he’s fired after the acquisition. [Bloomberg]
$22 billion
Market value of Dollar General, which has seen profits soar off growth in rural areas where supermarkets otherwise have left to been displaced. Dollar General has been steadily gaining ground in the parts of the country that other retailers do not want to open new space in, and the more the rural U.S. struggles economically the more customers Dollar General can chase. [The Wall Street Journal]
$98,750,067,000,000
That’s the total value of companies listed on the world’s stock markets as of close on Friday, just a hair under a hundred trillion dollars. Humans tend to like big round numbers, but also tend to get pretty freaked out by them and not really know how to handle it emotionally when we pass big round numbers, as if that hundred trillionth dollar was worth any more than its 99,999,999,999,999 compatriots. Anyway, it could get weird. Numbers are weird. [Bloomberg]
Check out Besides the Points, my new sports newsletter.
If you see a significant digit in the wild, send it to @WaltHickey.