Welcome to Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
57 percent
Percentage of Americans who disagree with legislation mandating which bathrooms transgender people may use, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. Republicans — members of the party that has been proposing this legislation — are split on the matter, with 48 percent both for and against. [The Washington Post]
63 percent
Percentage of Americans who do not believe in UFOs, according to an Associated Press poll. Hillary Clinton is apparently not among that number, and she has promised to open up government files on UFOs if elected president. “There’s enough stories out there that I don’t think everybody is just sitting in their kitchen making them up,” she said in a recent radio interview. [The New York Times, FiveThirtyEight]
131 votes
For the first time ever, the MVP of the NBA was selected unanimously: Steph Curry won all 131 first-place votes. [SFGate]
1,284 planets
The Kepler mission to find new worlds has found another batch of planets, NASA announced Tuesday. This time it’s 1,284 new planets, bringing the total found by the Kepler space telescope to 2,325. Uh, maybe Clinton’s got a point with that whole alien thing. [NASA]
20,000
Conservative estimate for the number of mercenaries working around the globe who are from Uganda. The nation is a major source of private security personnel, whose employment ranges from guarding banks and malls at home to protecting American diplomats in Iraq. [Bloomberg]
$13 billion
The top 25 hedge fund managers pulled in a collective $13 billion last year, with Kenneth Griffin of Citadel and James Simons of Renaissance Technologies receiving the highest individual compensation. [Reuters]
If you haven’t already, you really need to sign up for the Significant Digits newsletter — you can be the first to learn about the numbers behind the news! How great does that sound? You should totally do it.
And if you see a significant digit in the wild, send it to @WaltHickey.