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Significant Digits For Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2016

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3-3

The World Series will go to Game 7 following a massive Chicago Cubs win over the Cleveland Indians last night that tied up the series 3-3. Based on our MLB predictions, Cleveland is the slight favorite to win, but anything is possible. [FiveThirtyEight]


3 108-year-olds

The Chicago Tribune, the Northbrook Star and the Wall Street Journal have each run a splashy profile of a 108-year-old Chicago native, which would make them the same age as the Cubs title drought. A Bloomberg estimate that there should only be around 25 people aged 108 in Chicago presumably means 22 papers are sitting on glowing profiles we have yet to read. [Bloomberg]


4 nights

Weird idiosyncrasy of both Trump and Clinton in this campaign: They both really like sleeping in their own beds every night. At considerable expense, each flies back from the campaign almost every night to crash at their own house. Trump stayed at a property he owned all but four of the nights in October. [POLITICO]


32 percent

FiveThirtyEight has premiered its college football predictions, and 8-0 Alabama is a 32 percent chance to win the national title. Other teams in the hunt include Clemson, Michigan and Washington. [FiveThirtyEight]


60 to 70

Last year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — the folks behind the Oscars — recognized that their current membership did not reflect the nation or the industry as a whole, and sought to include more diverse members while also considering removing the voting rights of older members who has been inactive in the industry. The end result of that last drive? They’re stripping the voting rights from only 60 to 70 people, which the Academy says is “under 1 percent” of its members. At some point it goes from a necessary corrective to a cruel thing to do to a bunch of old folks, you know? [The Los Angeles Times]


$69 million

There’s an incredible political scandal going on in South Korea right now. The details are far too many to put in a significant digit – I recommend reading the full account — but the gist is that the president has been keeping company with a number of shady characters with vague affiliations to a cult and running major decisions and briefings past them. It involves a slush fund with an alleged $69 million in graft in it, corruption in higher education, a telltale selfie left on a tablet lousy with evidence, and an apoplectic South Korean populace. [The New York Times]


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Walt Hickey was FiveThirtyEight’s chief culture writer.

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