EVERY WEEK, TheJournal.ie offers a selection of statistics and numerical nuggets to help you digest the week that has just passed.
$340.47 – Google’s profits, per second, for 2012. The search giant had ‘retained earnings’ of $10.737 billion for the calendar year.
6.0134863 – The average number of iPhones sold by Apple in the fourth quarter of 2012, per second. The company sold a new record of 47.8 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, as it set a new quarterly profit record of $13.1 billion. That was still disappointing for investors, though, who expected higher Mac sales.
18.22 – The number of public jobs to be cut every day, on average, over the next two years. Brendan Howlin has affirmed plans to cut the public workforce down to 282,500 by the end of 2014. It currently stands at around 292,000.
8 – The total number of councillors in Co Kerry who actually voted on Danny Healy-Rae’s infamous motion calling for a higher blood-alcohol limit to apply to motorists living in rural areas. There are 27 members of the council.
One in five – The proportion of Irish principals who now say hunger in their classrooms poses a genuine threat to student performance.
59 per cent – The proportion of the Irish population who would trust the EU, ahead of their national government, to manage the eurozone’s debt crisis.
Three – The number of times that Real Madrid and Barcelona will face each other within 34 days. The two Spanish giants will play each other in the two-legged semi final of the Copa Del Rey, with a league encounter in the middle. For Real it gets worse: they play Manchester United in the Champions League, in the same week as two games against their bitter Catalan rivals – all while missing their goalkeeper and captain, Iker Casillas.
26 per cent – Spain’s unemployment rate. Nearly six million people are looking for work in the Iberian country.
100,000 – The approximate amount of new followers that 17-year-old Charlie Morgan gathered on Twitter in the 36 hours after that incident with Chelsea’s Edin Hazard. Morgan was working as a ball-boy at Swansea FC and looked like he was trying to time-waste when Hazard appeared to kick him.
11 – The number of European countries which will be introducing a financial transactions tax – or a so-called ‘Robin Hood Tax’ – but Ireland won’t be one. Michael Noonan has opted out of the plan because of concerns that a tax in Ireland could send jobs to London.
9 per cent – The proportion of company directors in Ireland who are female. That’s barely over half the EU average, and puts Ireland towards the bottom of the EU league table.
150 miles – The distance between the French town of Rouen and London. Despite the distance – and the sea between them – people in the British capital were able to pick up the smell after a large quantity of ‘rotten’ (but harmless) gas was leaked from a factory in the Normandy town. The nauseating smell caused headaches for many.
79,955 – The total number of contacts made with the Samaritans in Dublin in 2012. The majority of those were over the phone, but a growing number made use of the service’s face-to-face option.
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