The Page That Counts: Fall 2012

Photo by Graeme Pow

Estimated cost of the 2012 London Olympics: $14.1 billion [1]

Estimated cost of the 2004 Athens Olympics: $1.6 billion

Actual cost of the 2004 Athens Olympics: $16 billion [2]

Number of buildings built for the Athens Olympics: 22

Number of those buildings still in use: 1 [3]

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Number of times New York City police stopped and frisked black and Latino kids ages 14-18 in 2011: 120,000

Population of black and Latino boys ages 14-18 in New York City: 177,000 [4]

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Particle collisions analyzed in experiments to find Higgs boson particle: 500 trillion [5]

Weight of newly discovered suspected Higgs boson particle in gigaelectronvolts: 125.3

Amount of matter in the universe that would have mass without the Higgs boson: 0 [6]

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Percentage of articles in The New Yorker with a woman’s byline in 2011: 26.447

Percentage of women graduates from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2012: 608

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Calories in one large baked potato: 278 [9]

Calories in that same potato made into chips: 360 [10]

Number of pounds lost in one year by cutting 100 calories a day: 5 [11]

Percentage of potato crop consumed by Americans in processed forms: 72 [12]

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Percentage of Americans who believed that news is often influenced by powerful people and organizations, 1985: 53

Percentage of Americans who believed that news is often influenced by powerful people and organizations, 2011: 80 [13]

Number of companies controlling 90 percent of the media, 1983: 50

Number of companies controlling 90 percent of the media, 2011: 6 [14]

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Average cost of an individual health insurance policy in the U.S. in 2011: $5,429 [15]

Amount spent in the U.S. on cosmetic procedures in 2011: $10 billion [16]

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Length of time, in years, of video uploaded to YouTube every day: 8

Number of users who visit YouTube each month: 800 million

Number of page views YouTube receives each year: 1 trillion [17]

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Weight difference, in pounds, between frequent chocolate eaters (who weigh less) and infrequent chocolate eaters: 5-7 [18]

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1. British Parliament, March 9, 2012. 2. TIME, Sept. 30, 2009. 3. The Independent UK, Aug. 19, 2008. 4. WNYC, 2012. 5. Inside Science, July 2012. 6. BBC, July 2012. 7. Columbia Journalism Review, February 2012. 8. Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, 2012. 9. Nutritiondata.com, 2012. 10. Frito Lay, 2012. 11. The Lancet, Aug. 27, 2011. 12. U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2012. 13. Pew Research Center, Sept. 22, 2011. 14. Business Insider, 2011. 15. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2011. 16. American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 2011. 17. YouTube, 2012. 18. Journal of the American Medical Association, 2012.