Walt Hickey wrote a feature on the FiveThirtyEight website. The Nate Silver group that runs the site concentrates on sports and politics but Hickey's feature is called "Significant Digits" and came out on weekdays only. He and others kept their eyes open for any numbers in the news and often reported something odd or interesting having to do with a number, maybe a sports record or an odd price or something. Now Hickey has moved to just writing a newsletter called "Numlock" which is again about interesting numbers he (they) spot.
For example, Numlock today (May 24) includes this interesting item:
Once a waste by-product of the production of coffee beans, cascara — the husks of the bean — are now a trendy ingredient for new beverages. As a result, one coffee grower in El Salvador said cascara's per-pound price is fetching a 480 percent premium over the bean, with a pound of cascara fetching $7 and the average price for beans hanging around $1.20. Now I hope someone invents a trendy beverage made from empty Diet Coke cans so that I can become an extremely wealthy man.
Marvin G Perez and Leslie Patton, Bloomberg
The coffee beans sell for $1.20 a pound while the bean husks are selling for $7 a pound! Who could have predicted that???
It has definitely been worth the minute or two it takes to read the new Numlock newsletter, which is named after the key on most computer keyboards that keeps the number pad in numbers instead of cursor directions, up, down, etc. If you want to a free subscribtion, click on this link:
http://walthickey.com/numlock-newsletter/
