While families that have stay-at-home dads and working moms are more accepted by society than they were five years ago, percentage of moms who said stay-at-home moms are less accepted than they were five years ago, according to a BabyCenter report: 27

Source: BabyCenter, LLC.

Number of students who were taking at least one online course during the fall 2011 term, an increase of 570,000 students compared to the previous year, according to the 2012 survey of online learning conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group: 6.7 million

Percentage of higher education students who now take at least one course online: 32

Source: Babson College.

Year that three Bell Laboratory scientists unveiled what would become the junction transistor, the foundation of the information age, and shared the Nobel Prize in physics, according to the Census Bureau: 1956

Estimated number of stores selling electronic devices in the U.S., with sales worth $109 billion annually: 51,000

Source: Census Bureau.

Even if they've left the nest, percentage of today's emerging adults (defined as young people between the ages of 18 to 29) who maintain close contact with their parents via texting, email, phone or in person, according to a Clark University poll: 77

Percentage of emerging adults who contact their parents every day or almost every day: 52

Source: Clark University.

Average annual Valentine's Day spending, according to Statistic Brain Research: $13.19 billion

Number of Valentine's Day cards exchanged annually: 180 million

Average number of roses produced for Valentine's Day: 196 million

Percentage of Valentine's Day cards bought by women: 85

Percentage of flowers bought by men: 73

Source: Statistic Brain.

Percentage of Americans who believe that remorse motivated Lance Armstrong to confess to taking performance-enhancing drugs, according to an Ipsos/Reuters Poll: 12

Percentage who believe he came forward because he could no longer continue to deny it: 48

Percentage who say he confessed to help rebuild his public image: 31

Percentage of respondents who say he confessed to minimize his legal issues: 28

Source: Ipsos Public Affairs.

Percentage of formulated food that contains sweetener, according to a study published in The Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: 75

Percentage that use caloric sweeteners: 68

Percentage of yogurts and sport/energy drinks that use noncaloric sweeteners: 33

Percentage of waters (plain or flavored) and dietetic sweetened beverages that use noncaloric sweeteners: 42

Source: Food Nutrition & Science.

Percentage of data breaches that are attributable to lost paper files and portable memory devices, according to a survey conducted by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE) and the Health Care Compliance Association: 65

Percentage of compliance and ethics professionals who said that their department led the remediation effort following the last data breach: 69

Source: Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics.

Number of natural peril events that occurred worldwide in 2012 (2011: 257), according to the Annual Global Climate and Catastrophe Report and Catastrophe Insight: 295

Total economic loss caused by these events: $200 billion

Percentage of all 2012 insurance losses globally (nearly half of all economic losses for the year) that were accounted for by two U.S. natural peril events, Hurricane Sandy and a year-long drought: 66

Source: AON PLC.

Percentage of non-IT respondents who consider their IT department a support or maintenance organization, compared with 39 percent of IT: 54

Percentage of IT and non-IT respondents who are in agreement about the future importance of the internal IT team, and believe IT will become more critical to the business over the next two years: 60

Source: Information Week.

Idle Thought

"We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for." -- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

(Readers can contact John MacIntyre at johnmacintyre(at)bwr.eastlink.ca.)

Year the nation's telephone service options changed forever when AT&T complied with a Justice Department mandate to give up its local Bell System companies in what has been termed the most significant antitrust suit since the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911, according to the U.S. Census Bureau: 1982

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Percentage of Americans who think the old, pre-recession economy will return, according to the latest Country Financial Security Index survey: 27

Percentage of these Americans who don't expect to see it return until 2015 or later: 50

Source: Country Financial.

Percentage of young adults in the United States aged 18 to 29 who expect their marriages to last a lifetime, even though half of all marriages end in divorce, according to a study released by Clark University: 86

Percentage of respondents who believe that couples should walk down the aisle and exchange wedding vows before having a child: 73

Source: Clark University.

Ranks of Vienna, Zurich, Auckland, Munich and Vancouver on the list of the top cities with the world's best quality of living, according to the Mercer 2012 Quality of Living Survey: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Ranks of Honolulu (28), San Francisco (29), Boston (35), Chicago (42) and Washington, D.C., (43) on the list of the top American cities: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Source: Mercer.

Percentage of chief information officers who said their companies block access to online shopping sites (down from 60 percent last year), according to a poll by Robert Half Technology: 33

Percentage of respondents who said they allow access but monitor activity for excessive use: 55

Source: Robert Half.

Percentage of business technology professionals who say 20 percent or more of their IT operations are outsourced, up from 34 percent in 2010, according to Information Week magazine: 50

Source: Information Week.

Percentage of consumers who say the main reason they shop in stores is for convenience, according to the results of a survey by Continuum: 40

Percentage who say they don't trust the quality online: 22

Percentage who say they don't want to pay for shipping/returns: 17

Percentage who say they shop in stores for better prices: 17

Source: Continuum.

Percentage of consumers who say their health is good, according to the Consumer Health Mindset survey: 87

Percentage who say they are overweight or obese: 23

Percentage of those consumers who report being in good health who actually report height and weight that categorize them in the body mass index as overweight or obese categories: 53

Source: Aon Consulting.

In the year of the snake, the luxury spending per individual for China's ultra-high-net-worth individuals, according to predictions from Wealth-X: $570,000

Total luxury spending for the group, who number more than 12,000: $7 billion

Luxury spending per ultra-high-net-worth individuals in the U.S.: $1,350,000

Combined net worth projected to be reached (more than the GDPs of South Korea and Taiwan combined) by Chinese ultra-high-net-worth individuals: $1.7 trillion

Source: Wealth-X.

Average range of prices for Super Bowl XLVII ads, according to AdAge: $3.7 million to $3.8 million

Source: AdAge.

Idle Thought

"The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell." -- Confucius

(Readers can contact John MacIntyre at johnmacintyre(at)bwr.eastlink.ca.)

Percentage of American millionaires who agree that each generation should be responsible for creating its own wealth, up significantly from the 65 percent who said the same thing in 2007, according to a survey from PNC Wealth Management: 82

Percentage who expect to pass on at least $500,000 of wealth to their heirs: 49

Percentage of millionaires who say they received some help from their own parents: 67

Source: PNC Wealth Management.

Percentage of potential consumer electronics purchasers who are inspired by a consumer review to select a brand that had not been in their original consideration set, according to the "Buy It, Try It, Rate It" study from Weber Shandwick: 65

While consumer electronics buyers pay more attention to other consumers' reviews than to editorial reviews by a margin of more than 3 to 1, percentage who are concerned about the authenticity of consumer reviews, leading them to conduct considerable analysis before making their decision: 80

Source: Weber Shandwick.

Rank of "university professor" (median salary $62,050) on the list of least stressful careers for 2013, according to a report by CareerCast.com measuring work environment, job competitiveness and risk: 1

Ranks of enlisted military personnel ($41,998), military general ($196,300), firefighter ($45,250) and commercial airline pilot ($92,060) on the list of the most stressful professions: 1, 2, 3, 4

Source: CareerCast.com.

A century ago, average life expectancy for a baby girl, according to the U.S. Census Bureau: 56 years

A century ago, average life expectancy for a baby boy: 52

Average life expectancy for a baby girl today: 81 years

Average life expectancy for a baby boy: 76

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Football fans aren't the only ones enthusiastic about the Super Bowl -- percentage of advertising executives who say they would jump at the chance to work on such a high-profile campaign, according to a survey by The Creative Group: 74

Percentage of corporate marketing executives who said the same: 60

Source: The Creative Group.

Percentage of Americans who indicate that they have either paid with a simple tap of their smartphone against the merchant's point-of-service terminal or have witnessed it first-hand, according to the results of a Harris Poll: 13

Percentage of Americans who indicated that they believe smartphone payments will eventually replace payment card: 66

Source: Harris Interactive.

Percentage of companies that offer mentoring and coaching programs to employees, one of the key components put in place by winning companies, according to the latest findings of the National Association for Business Resources: 55

Percentage who use some type of survey to annually gauge employee engagement: 80

Source: National Association for Business Resources.

Percentage of wine-drinking Americans who say there has been a decline in manners and etiquette over the past few decades, according to a survey conducted by Survey.com on behalf of Ecco Domani Wines of Italy: 79

Percentage who say generations younger than their own generally have poorer manners: 65

Source: Survey.com.

Among those who social network, average number of hours spent every day socializing online, according to a survey by Ipsos Marketing: 3.6

Average number of hours a day spent social networking by those under 35: 4.2

Source: Ipsos Marketing Open Thinking Exchange.

Percentage of vehicle owners who say they use a downloaded app on their smartphone for navigation in their vehicle, compared with 37 percent in 2011, according to the J.D. Power and Associates: 47

Percentage of owners who indicate they "definitely would not" or "probably would not" repurchase a factory-installed navigation system if their smartphone navigation could be displayed on a central screen in their vehicle: 46

Source: JDPower and Associates.

Idle Thought

"A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools." -- Spanish proverb

(Readers can contact John MacIntyre at johnmacintyre(at)bwr.eastlink.ca.)