You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
3 women
That’s the current number of women who have entered a WWE Royal Rumble. But that figure is poised to rise this weekend with the first women’s Rumble (and the 31st Rumble overall). [Rumblemetrics]
32.5 percent
Among the 1,239 artists behind the top 100 songs in each of the past six years, men outnumbered women 3.5 to 1, according to a new study. Women made up 22.4 percent of artists as a whole, and only 8.7 percent of bands and 5.1 percent of duos. Women did tend to shine more on their own, accounting for 32.5 percent of solo artists. [Annenberg Inclusion Initiative]
54 percent
Percentage of Americans who are not bothered by professional athletes making public statements about politics, compared to 39 percent who say it does bother them. [PRRI]
1,070 women
For the first time in its more than 1,000-year history, Oxford University offered more British women undergraduate admission than men. Among the UK 18-year-olds taking undergraduate places in Autumn 2017, 1,070 are women and 1,025 are men.[The Guardian]
2025
A draft budget proposal shows the Trump administration intends to end funding for the International Space Station by 2025. [The Verge]
17 billion base pairs
Wheat is an essential component of the human story here on earth, but it was only last year that we actually got around to understanding its genome. Modern wheat is an amalgamation of several ancient wheats, and so has a wildly complex genetic structure. Humans, for example, have 3 billion base pairs of DNA; wheat has 17 billion. [The Economist]
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