EVERY WEEK, TheJournal.ie offers you a selection of statistics and numerical nuggets to help you digest the week that has just passed.
€2,138 – The amount that Spain is being loaned by the Eurozone’s bailout funds, per person, in order to recapitalise its banks. By comparison, Ireland’s €67.5 billion bailout, when split per person, was €14,450.94. Spain’s bailout was finalised yesterday.
$492,000,000 – The amount of money lost by Microsoft in the second quarter of 2012. That’s the first time in the company’s 37-year history that it’s reported a loss.
$2.8 billion – On the same day as Microsoft reported its loss, Google reported a fairly hefty second-quarter profit.
42 – The number of days for which the Dáil sat in its summer session. That’s up from 35 in the last comparable year, 2010. (There was no Easter break in 2011, because of the timing of the general election.)
16,975 – The number of parliamentary questions tabled by our TDs in those 42 sitting days. That’s an average of 404 each day, or an average of 27 questions per minister per day.
0.176 per cent – The average cost to a Eurozone bank of borrowing money, from another bank, for four weeks. That’s the Euribor, or ‘Eurozone Interbank Offered Rate’. It replaced DIBOR – the Dublin version – when the Euro was founded in 1999. Ever heard of DIBOR?
257 - The number of times, in the last six years, that a TD has borrowed one of the 20 tablet PCs offered for them for use by the authorities in Leinster House. They’ve been used only 25 times since the last general election – and only twice since last August.
8,758 – The population of the tiny Berlin commuter village of Mittelwalde. The town’s archivist has stumbled across a document from 1562 in which Mittelwalde lent Berlin 400 guilders (€112 million in today’s money). When the value is adjusted for inflation, the amount hits trillions. Unsurprisingly, Berlin isn’t rushing to repay the debt.
18 per cent – The amount of the world’s total proportion of spam emails which were sent from the Grum botnet, the world’s third-largest. No longer, though: the network was shut down this week.
€278 – The amount that the Revenue Commissioners (probably) doesn’t owe you. If you got an email from ‘Irish Tax and Customs Online’ telling you that Revenue wanted to give you a refund, it was spam. Sorry.
€45,454.54 – The amount that NAMA is being paid, per house, by a housing association in Co Carlow for each of 55 houses in an unfinished housing estate in Carlow. Oakley Wood has been sold for a total of €2.5 million. The group responsible wants to finish the units and turn them into social housing.
120 – The speed, in beats per minute (BPM), of Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe’. That, according to the songwriter we spoke to, is the ideal tempo of a radio hit – as anything faster seems too chirpy, and anything slower provokes discomfort. That’s just one of the many sly tactics that have gone into manufacturing the hit of the summer.
£78.29 – The amount, per second, that it would cost you to sit in the most expensive seats at the Olympics 100m final if Usain Bolt were to equal his current world record of 9.58 seconds. The top-of-the-range tickets for the night of the 100m final are a cool £750 – and are all sold out.
17 minutes – The time it took users of 4chan to not only figure out the location in which a photograph was taken, but to forward details to the local news outlets and to a corporate office. Anyone standing in tubs of Burger King lettuce will tread (!) more carefully next time.
