Statistics You Never Thought You Needed

*Over the course of Sarah Palin's tenure at Fox News, according to the University of Minnesota, she was paid $15.85 per word.
*The odds, according to Doc Sports Service, currently favor the first quarter of the Super Bowl not ending in a tie with odds of -325 (meaning you'd have to bet $325 to win $100, getting back $425 total). If you disagree, you can do so at +250 odds (meaning you'd bet $100 to win $250, getting back $350 total). The odds also favor an odd number of points being scored (-140), the Ravens punting more than the 49ers (-135), there being over 17,000 tweets per second at some point during the game (-140), Barack Obama picking the Ravens to win (-200), the game's MVP thanking his teammates first, before his coach, owner, family or God (7/5), Alicia Keys not forgetting any words in the national anthem (-250) or adding any new ones (-300), and the Dow Jones going up the day after the game (-130).
*There are four college football teams who have won 11 games or more the last two seasons: Oregon, Alabama, Stanford and South Carolina. If you knew that, South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier has $100 for you.
*The peak connection speed in Hong Kong is 54.1 mbps, fastest in the world, ahead of South Korea (48.8) and Japan 42.2). Their average is 9.0, third place globally behind... well, Japan (10.5) and South Korea (14.7). The full report from Akamai requires registration.
*5% of American janitors- an estimated 115,520 people- have bachelor's degrees.
*Smokers who quit prior to the age of 40 can gain back almost (but not all) of the lifespan they would have had if they had never smoked at all, according to the University of Toronto. Though obviously it's better to not have smoked in the first place.
*A study by Uri Simonsohn at the Wharton School of Business shows that, in a job interview process, the closer to the front of the line you are, the better your odds. On a 1-5 point scale rating job applicants, for every .75 rating points achieved by a previous applicant, an interviewer will subconsciously drop the score of the next applicant by .075 (enough to cancel out 23 months of experience), with the effect accumulating as an interview day progresses. Interviewers are particularly reluctant to rate too many consecutive applicants similarly, so if the last five people have aced their interview, you may be up a river before you even walk in the door. (Conversely, if the last five people can barely operate a crayon, the interviewer may be happy just to see someone who can show basic brain functions.) The full study is available here.