Numbers: Oct. 2, 2006

$4.6 billion Amount hedge-fund firm Amaranth Advisors lost this month betting on rising natural-gas prices--which fell 12%

$1.4 billion Amount Amaranth lost when it liquidated assets at a discount to avoid a possible shutdown

2 million Number of tires Florida officials dumped into the Atlantic in 1972 to seed an artificial reef, which never formed. The loose tires are now damaging real coral reefs

$5 million Estimated cost of removing the tires, which is expected to begin in 2008

1 Number of years it took David Banh, 18, to earn enough credits to graduate--with a double major in physics and math--from the University of Virginia

1/3 Proportion of students at four-year colleges in Virginia who fail to graduate within six years

3.3 million Age, in years, of a skeleton of a 3-year-old girl recently unearthed in Ethiopia. The remains are thought to be the oldest ever found of a child

150,000 Estimated number of years after the death of the child, nicknamed Lucy's Baby, that Lucy, the most famous primitive human specimen, walked the earth

Sources: Bloomberg (2); Miami Herald (2); Washington Post (2); Nature (2)