numbers this week: Aug 3, 2020

 

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These are some of interesting numbers surface this week.

Number of COVID19 infected people in the United States of America

The number of infected people in US has exceeded 5 million. The daily infection rate is above 60,000, and the good news is that it is declining. Number of people died is over 162,000. These information is from COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). The 5 million jumped out at me because the population of Singapore is about 5.85 million. This means that almost the entire population in Singapore is infected based on this number (in US) alone. Evidently, there shall be significant health issues down the road because COVID-19 viruses damages major organs like lungs, kidneys and gut.

Apple's market cap

Apple‘s market cap is nearly $2 trillion, and it has overtook Saudi Aramco (Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company) as the company with highest market cap. This is impressive because Apple hit the $1 trillion mark in September 2019. They took less than a year to double this number. This means that Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG) to farther behind APPL in term of market caps. Outside US (focusing on tech companies alone), we have Alibaba (BABA), and Tencent (TCEHY) with almost $650 billion market cap each. Apple generated 44.3 percent of its revenue from iPhone saleshttps://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-iphone-sales-since-3rd-quarter-2007/ – quote from iPhone sales share of Apple’s total revenue worldwide from 4th quarter 2009 to 2rd quarter 2020. Apple has also announced 4 for 1 stock splits.

Mark Zuckerberg becomes world's 3rd centibillionair

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (who holds 13% stakes of Facebook) fortune is above $100 billion. The other two centibillionairs are Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. In 2007, at age 23, Mark became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, and at age 36, he became the youngest centibillionaire. The good news is that he pledge to donate 99% of his wealth to charities over the course of his life (see The Giving Pledge). Interesting read: Why hasn’t Jeff Bezos donated as much to charity as billionaires like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg?

SpaceX: Crew Dragon returns home

Last week, Crew Dragon returned to Earth and this is yet another historic event for SpaceX. I was reading Why Is It So Difficult For A Returning Spacecraft To Re-Enter Our Atmosphere?). The spacecraft entered the Earth‘s upper atmosphere at 27,000km/hour (speed of sound is 1,235 km/hour). And, the temperature around the spacecraft exceeded 7,000 degree celsius. These numbers are shocking. I expect object traveling at this speed and so hot to break into pieces.

Snooker: Higgins hit maximum break

In this year’s World Snooker Championship, John Higgins who is the four time Champions hit a maximum break, and no one has managed it since Stephen Hendry in 2012. John’s feat makes him (45 years and 80 days) the oldest player to hit maximum break. (Video). Unfortunately, John lost to Kurt Maflin in the same game. On the brighter side, the prize money for maximum break is £40,000 (reference).