Numbers @ Coding in the trenches

4.22

2013-09-18T07:00:00Z

4.22 is roughly the number of light years from Earth to the closest star in the Alpha Centauri system, Proxima Centauri. Just to be clear 4.22 light years works out to roughly 39,900,000,000,000 km, this is a really big number.

Recalling an earlier post, approximately 262.1 billion vehicle miles were estimated to have occurred in US for May 2013. If we extrapolate the May travel figure out over 12 months then it would take ~7.9 years at 262.1 billion miles per month to travel the distance between Earth and Proxima Centauri.

It’s hard to describe and comprehend the distances involved when it comes to travel off our planet.

0.00006%

2013-09-17T07:00:00Z

~0.00006% is the rate of occurence of the phrase ‘once upon a time’ in Google books Ngram Viewer when it peaked around 1922. The link also includes the phrase ‘dark and stormy night’ in reference to the much joked about opener ‘It was a dark and stormy night..’. Interestingly the maligned dark and stormy opener has never occurred as often as the apparantly much more common phrase ‘once upon a time.’

23000

2013-09-16T07:00:00Z

At least 23000 individuals lost their lives due to antibiotic resistant infections last year.

The CDC recently released a report on the antibiotic resistant pathogens. It’s frightening, almost as frightening as a Department of Defence Concept Plan to handle an Influenza pandemic that starts out with an assumption that 2,000,000+ citizens will die.

As frightening as the CDC report is, however it’s worth a read. The report is well written and contains a lot of useful information about the origin of drug resistant bacteria and fungus, how we are currently making the problem worse, what to do about it, and some of the greatest current threats.

Finally, to bang on a drum that I’ve hit before: Number of deaths of private US citizens due to terrorism in 2012? According to the Department of State there were 10 such deaths.

15000000

2013-08-08T07:00:00Z

Speaking of things that require college degrees (see yesterday’s post): The Linux kernel as of 2011 had 15+ million lines of code spread across 37000 files. I’ve worked on a few relatively complex applications recently, but they have all been measured in multiples of 10000 lines. Anything measured in millions of lines of code really does take a community effort to maintain.

28.2

2013-08-07T07:00:00Z

According the US Census quick facts page the percentage of persons age 25+ holding a bachelor’s degree or higher is 28.2%. In the same age group the percentage of people with a GED or better is 85.4%.

Great, so as a country we’re mostly literate in basic high school reading, writing, mathematics, and science. This could be considered a good thing since we’re in much better shape than 100 years ago. On the other hand it means that there are a number of positions in economy which require 4 years degrees at a minimum that are out of reach to many.

18262

2013-08-06T07:00:00Z

The number of combined radio and TV episodes in the drama series (The) Guiding Light is 18262. Guiding Light is currently the longest running television drama in history, broadcast begin in 1952 and end in 2009.

262.1

2013-08-05T07:00:00Z

262.1 **billion** vehicle miles was the U.S. Department of Transportation’s estimated travel figure for the month of May in 2013, in units used by the rest of the world that yields roughly 422 billion kilometers traveled.

It’s really astonishing to me that the distance traveled by vehicles in 1 month just in the US is measured in hundreds of billions of miles. When considering this figure it’s worth keeping in mind that the maximum distance from Earth to Mars is ~401 **million** kilometers or about 1000 times less than the vehicle miles for the month of may.

7.25

2013-08-02T07:00:00Z

$7.25/hour is the U.S. Federal minimum wage as of July 24, 2009, for reference that works out to $15080/year assuming 40 hours per week and 52 weeks per year.

The federal poverty line for a 1 person family/household is set at $11170.

For some reason these numbers seem awfully low.

5500

2013-08-01T07:00:00Z

Today’s number is the estimated number of a calories that a Tour de France rider consumes in a single day. Now I’m cheating a bit with this number since it is a rough estimate instead of a more exact statistic.

5500 kcal per day for a Tour de France rider is still interesting though because it can be used for the sake entertaining comparisons. The average tour stage this year was around 209km, let’s call it 200Km.

Now let’s consider a car driving along the same stage as the Tour de France rider. Let’s be optimitic and say the car is modern, small, and well maintained– we will estimate fuel consumption at 20 MPG (or in proper units ~11.76L/100km). Such a car would consume 178610.88 kcal en route or in other words ~32 times what the human rider needed to travel the same distance.

Of course the car is much bigger than the human rider so we should take mass into consideration. A 2013 Corolla L weighs 2734lb (or ~1240kg) and let’s say that our rider is 150lb (or 68kg). The car’s engine spent ~144 kcal/kg to move the car from start to finish of the stage whereas the rider used ~80 kcal/kg (or 56% of what the car needed) to get from start to finish.

What’s do all these numbers mean? To me they mean that we (as a race) still have a long way to go in terms of making speedy personal transportation an energy efficient means of getting around.

8.1

2013-07-31T07:00:00Z

8.1% is the estimated gap between what the US economy was capable of producing (in terms of GDP) and what was actually being produced in the second half of 2009. The recession that occurred between 2008 and 2009 hit the reset button on wealth derived from rising home prices and relatively cheap debt. The recession occurred during the same time as a major financial crisis in the US resulting in a severe economic downturn.

8.1% really doesn’t sound like much, but it is a large number when applied at the scale of a country (like the US). For reference, an indicator of expansion of the economy is the GDP, a measurement where the difference between bad and good can be a few 1/10ths of a percent.

32367

2013-07-30T07:00:00Z

According to the NTSB 32367 is the estimated number of highway related fatalities recorded by the US department of transportation during 2011. 11981 (that is 37%) of those 32367 fatalities were due to incidents involving passenger cards.

For reference the estimated number of aviation related fatalities for the same period was 494. Additionally, 0 of those aviation fatalities occurred on airlines (i.e. most of the fatalities occurred due to incidents involving private planes).

Finally, what about the number of deaths of US citizens worldwide due to terrorism? According to the US Department of State: 17. Obviously this figure does not include military deaths–see the linked page for a precise definition of US citizen fatalities due to terrorism.

1962

2013-07-29T07:00:00Z

1962 was the year a coal mine started in Centralia, PA that could potentially burn for some time yet to come. The fire caused most people in the town to evacuate by the mid-1990s leaving a few who decided to stay. It is literally a slow, smoldering, underground hazard. According to the linked article there are a number of ongoing underground and surface coal fires in the US.

Marshmallows anyone?

58027.6

2013-07-28T07:00:00Z

58,027.6 is the population per square mile of Guttenberg, NJ in 2012. Guttenberg edges out a number of other locations in the US to be the most densely populated city in the US.

For reference the population density of NYC was 27,543.1 during the same time period.

12.07

2013-07-27T07:00:00Z

12.07% is the percentage of single active duty women with children relative to all active duty women in the armed forces as measured by a US Department of Defence data release. As an aside the same data release shows that 4.24% of active duty men in the armed forces are single with children.