Nathan Heller:

Average college debt, adjusted for inflation, has tripled since the late nineteen-eighties.

(It's still growing.)

Nicola Clark:

Nearly 40 percent of French 15-year-olds have repeated at least one grade.

Clay Shirky:

Tuition and fees at public four-year colleges went up 72% last decade, even as the market value of a bachelor's degree fell by 15%.

Nathan Heller:

Nielsen data indicate that the most enthusiastic audience for HBO's "Girls" is middle-aged men.

Gretchen Reynolds:

Every single hour of television watched after the age of 25 reduces the viewer's life expectancy by 21.8 minutes.

Arif Hasan:

According to 2006 figures, fully 72 percent of the University of Karachi student body is today female. Among medical students, 87 percent are women, and the figure for architecture and planning is as high as 92 percent.

"Emma Gertlowitz", 11-year-old fan of Nate Silver:

Statisticians are the new sexy vampires, only even more pasty.