By The Numbers

Justice by the numbers

Marketplace Staff Jan 20, 2016
22 million

That’s how many digits are in the longest prime number, which was discovered by a computer in Missouri — it’s 22,338,618 digits long, to be exact. That beats the previous longest known prime number by five million digits. As BBC Tech writes, the number was discovered as part of a global effort to discover prime numbers known as the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (Gimps).

90 percent

That’s how much registration of electric vehicles fell in Georgia since the summer of 2015. What’s especially surprising about the drop is that about a year ago, Atlanta was ranked the number two city in the country for electric car use. Why the sudden drop? Georgia lawmakers took away a tax incentive that offered people who bought or leased electric vehicles a $5000 tax credit.

81 percent

That’s how accurate a new algorithm is at determining which of the Supreme Court Justices wrote an unsigned opinion (referred to as a per curiam). M.I.T.’s William Li designed the algorithm in response to what he felt is a privilege abused by the courts. Li’s design came together by analyzing each justice’s writing style, and testing accuracy using opinions with known authors. As The Atlantic writes, its eerie accuracy could even make a case for robots that are designed to judge in the style of each of the justices.

6-8

That’s how many workers are replaced by an industrial dishwasher. That matters to Richard LoGuercio, who employs hundreds of people to run his Los Angeles event rental business, Town and Country Event Rentals. But LoGuercio says that the upcoming minimum wage hike turns him into the bad guy — forcing him to find shortcuts to hire less workers.

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