WORKSHEET 1

Business numbers trivia

by Alex Case

Questions
business & esp worksheet 1

Try to guess the correct answers below. Circle one phrase in each sentence.

1 The income-tax rate in Denmark is a tiny bit more than / a bit more than / quite a bit more
than / much more than / much, much more than the income-tax rates in Bahrain and Qatar.

2 The average office workstation has much less / a little less / a little more / much more bacteria
than the average office toilet.

3 In 1914, Ford paid workers who were aged 22 or older $5 per day. This was about a third / about
half / about double the average wage offered by other car factories.

4 The Dow Jones Industrial Average index was much lower / a little lower / a little higher / much
higher at the end of the Second World War than in early 1942.

5 The amount of money lost to American businesses due to traffic jams is much less than / about
the same as / much more than the amount of money lost due to employees playing
computer games.

6 Alexander Graham Bell filed for a patent on his design for a telephone a long time before / a
short time before / a short time after / a long time after his rival, Elisha Gray.

7 On the highest volume day on the NYSE ever (January 4, 2001) hundreds of times more /
thousands of times more / millions of times more shares were traded than on the lowest
volume day (March 16, 1830).

8 American adults spend a little less / much less / about the same amount of time every year
planning their retirement than choosing their clothes.

Read through the sheet(s) of business trivia your teacher gives you and try to find as many
answers to these questions as you can. Not all of the answers will be on your sheet.

Ask each other trivia questions based on the information you have on your sheet. After each
guess, give the student guessing a hint based on the language above, e.g:

• ‘No, the real figure is more than double that.’

• ‘Not quite. This number is a tiny bit more.’
• ‘Not even close. This number is many, many times less than that.’
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© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2007

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BUSINESS & ESP / Skills / Numbers trivia

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 WORKSHEET 2
Business numbers trivia
by Alex Case

The trivia
business & esp worksheet 2

Page 1

• In 1987, American Airlines saved $40,000 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in
first-class.
• The biggest white-collar crime ever was when a Japanese copper trader working for Sumitomo
lost $2.6 billion over ten years.
• On average, an office workstation has 400 times more bacteria than an office toilet.
• The longest ever queue at a drive-in restaurant was 7 miles, at the opening day of McDonald’s
in 1994 in Kuwait City.
• The newspaper with the highest daily circulation in the world is the Yomiuri Shimbun. In January
2002 it sold 14,323,781 copies a day.
• The Oedo line is the most expensive underground railway line ever built. It cost 1.4 trillion yen
(£7 billion).
• More than 1,000 new types of canned and bottled drinks are launched in Tokyo every year.
• Inflation at the time of the Yugoslav War meant that it took 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 of the
new 1994 Dinara to equal one of the pre-1990 Dinara.
• The largest antitrust penalty ever was the $110 million that Ucar International Inc had to pay for
price fixing.
• The largest ever daily drop in the Dow Index was 554.26 points (22.6%) on October 27, 1997.
• On February 14, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell filed for a patent on his design for a telephone
only two hours before his rival, Elisha Gray.
• Tokyo’s largest department-store food hall is in the Tobu department store in Ikebukuro. It has
243 different vendors.

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BUSINESS & ESP / Skills / Numbers trivia

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 WORKSHEET 2
Business numbers trivia
by Alex Case

The trivia
business & esp worksheet 2

Page 2

• Lost time in traffic jams costs American businesses up to $100 billion per year.
• The annual productivity loss by US businesses due to employees playing computer games at
work is estimated at $100 billion. This is about 2% of American GDP.
• The average length of a business lunch in the US is 36 minutes.
• The starting capital of Apple Computers was $1,300 on January 3, 1977. The founders raised
the money by selling a VW van and a scientific calculator.
• In 1998, with the amount of denim Levi’s used to make jeans, you could have circled the earth
52 times.
• Since 1954, only three companies have reached the famous no. 1 spot on the FORTUNE 500
biggest companies: General Motors, ExxonMobil and Wal-Mart.
• An American dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
• Coal supplies 25% of the energy needs of the world.
• 20% of the CO2 produced by man comes from transportation.
• The highest ever price per share was 167.9 million Japanese yen (approximately $1,512,500)
for one share of Yahoo Japan, on February 22, 2000.
• The top rate of income tax in Denmark is 68%. The basic rate starts at 42%. The rates of income
tax in Bahrain and Qatar are 0%.
• The longest internet site name in the world is 63 letters long.
• During World War II, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose from a low of 92.70 in early 1942 to
213.40 by the end of the war.
• Only 330 VW Beetles were sold in its first year on sale in the US. Liquid Paper sold only 1,200
bottles in its first year on the market. Remington typewriters sold 8 in their first year. Only 532
sets of the board game Scrabble were sold in its first year. And Coca Cola sold only 25 bottles in
the first year it was on sale.
• There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
• The 15km Tokyo Wan Aqualine bridge/tunnel linking Kanagawa and Chiba cost 100 billion yen
(half a billion pounds) per kilometre.
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BUSINESS & ESP / Skills / Numbers trivia

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 WORKSHEET 2
Business numbers trivia
by Alex Case

The trivia
business & esp worksheet 2

Page 3

• Tokyo consumers come into contact with up to 3,000 advertisements every day.
• Every year, about 100 new magazine titles appear in Japan.
• Hello Kitty weighs the same as three apples.
• There are 400,000 vending machines in Tokyo.
• Over a 45-year career, a commuter in the Chiyoda ward of Tokyo spends 2.9 years travelling to
and from work.
• The Japanese post office has 350 trillion yen in assets (£1.7 trillion).
• The average bank teller in the USA loses about $250 every year.
• If you stacked a million $1 bills, the pile of money would weigh 2,040.8 pounds. If you used $100
bills, the stack would weigh only 20.4 pounds.
• Adults spend an average of 145.6 hours a year selecting clothes. They spend 9.1 hours a year
planning their retirement.
• The highest volume day on the NYSE ever was on January 4, 2001, when 2,129,445,637
shares traded. The lowest volume day was March 16, 1830, when only 31 shares traded.
• 1 out of 10 secretaries in the USA say they have been romantically involved with their boss.
Only 25% of these secretaries said that this romance had a negative impact on their careers. 1
in every 8 boss–secretary romances in America ends in marriage.
• In 1914, Ford paid workers who were aged 22 or older $5 per day. This was about double the
average wage offered by other car factories.
• Tokyo Disneyland is the most popular theme park in the world. There were 16 million visitors in
the year 2000.

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BUSINESS & ESP / Skills / Numbers trivia

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 ANSWER KEY
Business numbers trivia
by Alex Case

1 The income-tax rate in Denmark is much, much more than the income-tax rates in
business & esp answer key

Bahrain and Qatar.

2 The average office workstation has much more bacteria than the average office toilet.

3 In 1914, Ford paid workers who were aged 22 or older $5 per day. This was about double the
average wage offered by other car factories.

4 The Dow Jones Industrial Average index was much higher at the end of the Second World War
than in early 1942.

5 The amount of money lost to American business due to traffic jams is about the same as the
amount of money lost due to employees playing computer games.

6 Alexander Graham Bell filed for a patent on his design for a telephone a short time before his
rival, Elisha Gray.

7 On the highest volume day on the NYSE ever (January 4, 2001), millions of times more shares
were traded than on the lowest volume day (March 16, 1830).

8 American adults spend much less time every year planning their retirement than
choosing their clothes.

D •
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SI A L
EB LO B
W N IA

© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2007

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FR BE C
O

BUSINESS & ESP / Skills / Numbers trivia

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