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Significant Digits For Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016

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


23 percent

Remember Pokemon Go? Well Sony’s got a game in Japan called “Fate/Grand Order” that’s giving it a run for its money, to the point that it’s single-handedly responsible for a 23 percent increase in operating profit for Sony Music in the latest quarter. [Bloomberg]


664 retractions

Number of retractions of scientific papers on MEDLINE, a database of scientific abstracts, in 2016. That’s in line with 2015’s figure of 684 retractions. [Retraction Watch]


10,000+ votes

Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina has finally conceded his re-election race to Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper, who has a lead of more than 10,000 votes in the state. McCrory vastly underperformed the other statewide races — Donald Trump won the state by about 100,000 votes, and Sen. Richard Burr won by about 200,000 — and the controversial HB2 law signed by McCrory regarding public bathroom usage that opponents considered anti-LGBT is a potential culprit. [New York Magazine]


$7 million

A one-of-a-kind Ferrari LaFerrari was auctioned off for $7 million, making it the priciest car sold that was made this century. The proceeds benefit the National Italian American Foundation’s Earthquake Relief Fund, which directs funds to earthquake relief. [The Verge]


$35 million

President-elect Donald Trump resides in New York City, in case you had not yet heard. Regrettably, so do like 8.4 million other people. As a result, New York City is spending a crapload of money putting police officers between those nine million people and Trump Tower. Mayor Bill de Blasio is asking the Obama administration for $35 million to pay for all those cops between election day and January 20. [New York Daily News]


$125 billion

A report that indicated the Pentagon could save $125 billion over five years by cutting bureaucratic waste among the 1,014,000 back office personnel — 268,000 of whom are outside contractors — was suppressed by leaders after the potential waste far exceeded expectations. [The Washington Post]


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Walt Hickey was FiveThirtyEight’s chief culture writer.

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