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Significant Digits For Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017

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


14 quarterbacks

Colin Kaepernick is a historical anomaly. There have been only 14 other quarterbacks who were (i) not yet 30, (ii) had thrown 200 passes or more in a season and (iii) never played again. And everyone in that group had football-related reasons they never took another snap — career ending injuries, substance abuse issues, got signed but never left the bench — rather than politics. [ESPN]

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16 investigators

There are now 16 lawyers known to be working on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential links between Russia and the Trump campaign. Kyle Freeny is No. 16. She left a high-profile money laundering case at the Department of Justice to join Team Mueller. [POLITICO]


-18 percentage points

President Trump’s job approval rating is down by 18 percentage points, on average, compared to his margin of victory in states he won by 10 or more points in 2016. [FiveThirtyEight]


$1.8 million

Equifax’s share price has dropped 35 percent since the company announced a security breach that exposed data on 143 million Americans. Before the breach was publicly announced (and after it was discovered), three Equifax executives sold $1.8 million worth of stock. Now the Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into whether the executives broke insider trading laws. [Bloomberg]


$60 million

Amount “It,” the movie adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, made last weekend. That would have been the best-ever September weekend at the domestic box office — except for the fact that it was the second weekend in cinemas for “It.” The movie notched a record-smashing $123 million opening the week before. So “It” now has the best weekend in September, the second best weekend in September, and then previous record-holder “Hotel Transylvania 2” is down in third place. [The Numbers]


$2.3 billion

Ballpark cost for the M7, a luxury submarine. Yes, rich people can totally buy submarines. No, I didn’t think that was legal either, but it’s legit. The M7 comes in at the shall-we-say high end of the luxury submarine market, as in “the most expensive private object worldwide” high-end. Too pricy? If you want something classier then a James-Cameron-class submersible but short of the M7, other sizable subs may soon be on sale that will appeal to the more price-conscious Nemo-wannabe in your life. [Bloomberg Pursuits]


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Walt Hickey was FiveThirtyEight’s chief culture writer.

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