From the Harper's Indexes

Some of these statistics are a little dated:

Ratio of federal spending each day on a U.S. public-school student to the amount spent on a federal prisoner: 1:4

Number of U.S. colleges offering an academic course in "leadership" in 1998: 237

Factor by which Harvard's admission rate for the children of alumni exceeds that for other qualified applicants: 3.63

Percentage change during the 1990s, in real dollars, in the average tuition at a U.S. private college: +24

Percentage change in the average tuition at a public college: +36

Ratio of Illinois death-row inmates executed since 1976 to the number declared innocent: 1:1

Expenditures for which the Pentagon could not account in 1998: $22,000,000,000

Months after the publication of Newt Gingrich's 1995 book To Renew America that his publisher asked retailers to cut the price by 38 percent: 6

Federal funds spent in 1996 and 1997 to gild Gingrich's office ceiling, gold excluded: $40,400

Annual federal spending on promotional activities for U.S. arms dealers: $444,200,000

Rank of arms trading, illegal drug trafficking, and oil production among the world's largest industries: 1,2,3

Maximum fine for begging without a permit in Orlando, Florida: $500

Federal anti-poverty funds granted Texas since 1996 that had not been spent by the fall of 1999: $149,000,000

Change in the number of Americans able to receive C-SPAN full-time since Congress altered cable laws in 1992: -5,000,000

Percentage by which the cost of producing Titanic exceeded the 1997 budget of the National Endowment for the Arts: 100

Portion of U.S. stock owned by the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans: 9/10

Months before the 1929 stock market crash that Forbes magazine noted the "heroic scale" of U.S. economic growth: 4

Number of Playboy centerfold models since 1959 whose bios claimed their favorite book was by Ayn Rand: 12