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databoat

Reports

Public data, read properly.

We take a public dataset, run it through Databoat and publish what comes out — the same process your monthly files go through. Free to read, nothing gated.

  1. 01

    What card processing actually costs on a small ticket

    Eight published rate cards, four columns each. Databoat derived the effective rate at every ticket size and the ordering flips completely — the cheapest processor at $5 is not the cheapest at $500.

    Source

    Stripe, Square and PayPal published US rate cards

    Rates verified August 2026

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  2. 02

    Filing late costs nothing most days, then £4,500 on one of them

    Companies House penalties are banded, not accrued. Derive the cost of a single day and it is £0 on almost every day of the year — except three, where crossing a boundary costs up to 219 times the average day.

    Source

    Companies House published penalty scale

    Current penalty scale

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  3. 03

    The fastest animal alive travels less than one kilometre an hour

    Rank animals by speed and a falcon wins. Divide by body length and the table turns upside down: a 0.7mm mite covers 321 of its own bodies every second, and a greyhound out-runs a cheetah.

    Source

    Recorded speeds and body lengths, Wikipedia species pages

    Recorded maxima

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  4. 04

    The cheapest rocket on the market is the most expensive way to reach orbit

    Electron costs $7.5m a launch — a tenth of a Falcon 9. Divide by what each actually lifts and the ranking inverts completely: Electron is the dearest per kilogram of any vehicle flying, and the Space Shuttle beats it.

    Source

    Published launch prices and payload specifications

    Published list prices, various years

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  5. 05

    Ten years into a 25-year mortgage you have repaid a quarter of it

    A £250,000 loan at 5% costs £1,461 a month. After a decade of paying that, £184,811 is still owed. Amortisation front-loads interest, and above 6.5% you repay the price of the house a second time.

    Source

    Standard amortisation, computed from first principles

    £250,000 over 25 years, capital repayment

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  6. 06

    China finished second in Paris and last per head of population

    The Paris 2024 medal table ranks by total. Divide by population and it inverts almost perfectly — China drops from second to sixteenth of sixteen, and Grenada wins by a factor of 269.

    Source

    Paris 2024 medal table and national population figures

    Paris 2024 Summer Olympics

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  7. 07

    The employer on-cost is not a flat percentage — it peaks at £50,270

    Employer NI and pension are usually quoted as a rough 15% on top of salary. Derive it properly across ten salary bands and the curve is a hump: it climbs to 16.13% and then falls, because pension stops but NI does not.

    Source

    HMRC and DWP published rates, 2026 to 2027

    Tax year 2026 to 2027

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  8. 08

    Every UK region is growing its business count — some barely

    ONS publishes a birth rate and a death rate for all twelve UK regions. Subtract one from the other and the spread is eight-fold: London adds businesses eight times faster than the East Midlands.

    Source

    Office for National Statistics

    Business demography 2024

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