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Significant Digits For Tuesday, May 12, 2015

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4 games

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell dropped the hammer on the New England Patriots Monday, punishing the team after a report determined it was more likely than not that members of the organization deliberately deflated footballs before key games. Quarterback Tom Brady was suspended for four games, and the team was fined $1 million and docked two draft picks. [ESPN]

1 in 6

While serial killers are often pictured as male, about 1 in 6 are women. [The New Yorker]

$9

Cost of a new micro-PC announced on Kickstarter. The Chip would ship in 2016. [PC World]

15 seasons

All things must come to an end, and “American Idol” — which I learned yesterday is still on television — will end next year after competing its 15th season. The desiccated and hideous portrait hidden in the ageless Ryan Seacrest’s attic was unavailable for comment. [Bloomberg]

54 percent

A new study suggests that more than half of people who reported using drugs only on weekends would, within the next six months, eventually decide to innovate and start using drugs on other days of the week as well. Because when you think about it, the days of the week are really pretty arbitrary, man. [Los Angeles Times]

$82,594

Hey, remember yesterday when we talked about all the taxpayer money New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is spending on lawyers? Well, here’s round two: An investigation found that Christie debited $82,594 in taxpayer funds to the concessions at Delaware North Sportservice, the guys who run the stadium where the Jets and Giants play. [New Jersey Watchdog]


1.7 million miles

That’s how many miles the director of Google’s self-driving car program said autonomous vehicles have travelled over the past six years of testing. [Medium]


53.5 million

We did it! Millennials are now a plurality of American workers, with 53.5 million people ages 18 to 34 in the workforce in 2015, compared to 52.7 million Gen Xers and 44.6 million baby boomers. I was born in the ’90s and I have a job — get used to it, boomers, my people are here to stay. [Pew Research Center]

$179,365,000

There’s a new record for sale price at auction for a work of art, with a Picasso selling for $179 million and change at Christie’s. [@ChristiesInc and NBC News]


$500 billion

So Dodd-Frank says that any bank with $50 billion in assets is under enhanced supervision from the government because it’s considered too big to fail — that covers 33 financial institutions. Sen. Richard Shelby, who’s now running the show at the Senate banking committee, is trying to raise the threshold to $500 billion, which would affect only six institutions. Realistically, that’s probably just an opening bid to strike a deal with banking committee Democrats. Either way, raising the floor would help banks just skirting underneath the $50 billion asset threshold expand. [The Wall Street Journal]


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And, as always, if you see a significant digit in the wild, tweet it to me @WaltHickey.

Walt Hickey was FiveThirtyEight’s chief culture writer.

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