EVERY WEEK, TheJournal.ie offers a selection of statistics and numerical nuggets to help you digest the week that has just passed.
€3,850 – The amount for which a San Diego mom auctioned off the naming rights for her forthcoming child. Natasha Hill took $5,000 from a website which is now running a public poll to decide what the child should be called.
207 – The number of members of the College of Cardinals, who will attend a conclave later this month to decide who will be the next pope. Only 117 get to vote in the elections to succeed Benedict XVI, though.
2,872 – The length of Benedict XVI’s pontificate.
0 per cent – The quantity of horse meat in an Icelandic beef pie tested this week. That’s not all good news, though… the tests revealed, bafflingly, that the meat pies have no meat content at all.
9,912 – The number of college students who have applied to SUSI for a grant but have not yet either been paid, or had a final decision made on their application. That amounts to about one in seven of all applicants.
26,217,000 – The number of people who were unemployed throughout the Eurozone in January, according to Eurostat figures.
33,210 – The number of soldiers for whom records appear in a military census from 1922, which was put online this week. The census was taken during the Irish Civil War to ascertain the extent of the Free State Army’s manpower.
1,200 - The amount by which the numbers at work in Ireland grew in 2012. That might seem like little, but it’s the first time in four-and-a-half years that the number of people working has been higher than it was 12 months previously.
€7,834.66 – The amount that the Department of Foreign Affairs spent on wine in 2012 – less than a sixth of the amount bought in 2011. The Tánaiste said he gave an instruction last year that all costs for official hospitality should be kept to a minimum.
€31,500 – The approximate amount that the average former First Active mortgage holder might now have to pay to Ulster Bank, after the bank reported an error in calculating repayments for some customers. Customers who were given interest-only repayments for the first years of their mortgage were never put back onto capital repayments.
€1.2 billion – The amount Ulster Bank lost in 2012. That’s about a fifth of the entire losses of its parent bank, RBS, which is mostly owned by the British taxpayer.
999 - The number of senior matches played by Manchester United midfielder Ryan Giggs (before today’s game against Norwich, where he may have clocked up his 1,000th game for United, Wales and Great Britain). The Guardian calculate that Giggs has shared the pitch with 244 teammates in all of that time.
17,985 – The number of children born in Ireland in the third quarter of 2012. 34 per cent were to parents who were not in a marriage or civil partnership.
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