Significant Digits For Thursday, May 7, 2015


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4th season

On Thursday Fox announced the cancellation of “The Mindy Project,” but distraught fans were told nearly instantaneously that the show would be moving to Hulu. TV in 2015, where nothing can stay dead — especially a “Walking Dead” spinoff. [The Hollywood Reporter]

6.5-point favorite

Las Vegas sports books are scrambling to put a hold on New England Patriots bets after a report from the NFL said that the team probably under-inflated footballs to gain a competitive advantage. It’s currently unclear if there will be any punishment meted out to the team or quarterback Tom Brady, leading Vegas to freeze betting on New England’s first game, in which it was favored by 6.5 points against the Pittsburgh Steelers. [Bloomberg]


18 percent

Zynga, the publicly traded two-hit wonder behind Farmville and Words With Friends, is laying off 18 percent of its workforce to cut $100 million in costs. [Mashable]

45 percent

Percent of Iowa Republicans who are likely caucus-goers and have an unfavorable opinion of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. [The New York Times]


56 shots

Judges in France will decide whether to find a bar owner guilty of manslaughter in the death of a patron who consumed 56 shots in one night. The bar had a sign indicating a previous such record was 55 shots. The patron reportedly consumed 30 shooters in a minute. This is a good reminder that alcohol is technically poison. [The Local]


190 shops

The number of one-hour photo stores fell from 3,066 shops in 1998 to a mere 190 stores in 2013 nationwide. That makes RadioShack look like Apple and Blockbuster look like… well, still Blockbuster, actually. [Bloomberg]


1 in 285

A somewhat surprising finding out of Silicon Valley: despite being over-represented in tech employment overall, a new study found that Asian men and women were vastly underrepresented in executive leadership positions at Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn and Yahoo. The gap is largest among women: while 1 in 87 white men at those firms is in management at an executive level, only 1 in 285 Asian women are. [San Jose Mercury News]

1,469 days

The average length of an investigation into a sexual assault at at a college or university that concluded in 2014 was 1,469 days, or more than four years. [FiveThirtyEight]

$597,429

Total amount of fines handed out by the Federal Election Commission due to infractions during the 2014 election, a new low in fines since they began to be recorded in 2001. This is all despite increasing amounts of money flowing into politics. I doubt donors seeking to purchase influence from elected officials have suddenly become awesome at only doing legal things. [New York Times]

£5 million

That’s how much was wagered with London-based betting house Ladbrokes on the outcome of today’s U.K. election. One estimate has £100 million riding on the election in gambling alone. The U.K. sounds awesome. [FiveThirtyEight]

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