There’s one supermarket for every 8,592 residents of Florida, which has six times as many people as Mississippi, where there is one supermarket for every 7,753 people. Utah has about the same population as Mississippi, but has only one supermarket for every 9,952 people.

When Sam Knowlton was a reporter at The Vicksburg Post — he’s now finishing up law school — he was my math man.

Sam had a master’s in business administration, so whenever I needed ciphering done I’d call for him.

Charlie Mitchell is executive editor of The Vicksburg Post. Write to him at Box 821668, Vicksburg, MS 39182, or e-mail.

Sam would carefully write out the appropriate equation to determine the value of “x” in any problem I posed for him, a percentage increase or whatever. And then he’d offer to let me work the equation myself.

I try never to be abrupt with people — at least without a good reason — but I had to explain to Sam a couple of times that I was interested in a solution, not a riddle. I already knew what I didn’t know. (Makes me wonder, too, whether Sam, when he gets his lawyer license, will offer his clients a do-it-yourself divorce kit.)

Anyway, the point here is a confession: I like numbers.

• Since it rolled the dice on casinos in 1990, the state of Mississippi has collected, through June, four billion, five hundred sixty-two million, eight hundred ninety-four thousand, six hundred forty dollars and two cents in taxes. (I wrote it out because it looks more impressive than $4,562,894,640.02.)

• The United States Navy has 11 aircraft carriers in service out of the 77 built since the first one was commissioned in 1922. Only one in service is named for a member of the Senate, Mississippi’s John C. Stennis, and only one is named for a living person, the George H.W. Bush.

• Americans will buy between 10.3 and 10.4 million Toyotas this year.

The affinity is for numbers that make a statement, or at least part of a statement. If I see a chart with numbers, I will study it and try to figure out what the numbers mean. Try these:

• Nearly half of all students enrolled in four-year colleges are freshmen.

• In Mississippi, 21.1 percent of Medicare clients admitted to hospitals in 2004 were readmitted within 30 days. The rate in Idaho was 13.3 percent.

• The average cell phone customer in America is billed for 459 minutes (more than seven and a half hours) per month.

• A medium gauge plastic grocery store shopping cart costs $165.

I don’t like squishy numbers, such as four out of 10 Americans like catfish or one of every 19 citizens thinks Barack Obama was born in Kenya or three out of four people favor health care reform. Poll-type numbers are inherently unreliable and can change overnight. They mirror what Mark Twain said about statistics. Give me rock solid numbers.

• A freshman starting college this year will, on average, face tuition and fees totalling $48,000 over the next four years in a public college or university and $105,000 in a private college or university.

• The government calculates that 10 percent of all Medicare payments — $60 billion per year — are completely bogus. That’s enough to give every man, woman and child in Vicksburg $2 million.

• Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the United States at 2.4 per 1,000 population. Texas has the highest rate at 4.1 per 1,000.

• In October, 21,508 people — a few thousand less than the whole population of Vicksburg — were in a Mississippi prison, satellite facility or restitution center. That’s up about 3,000 since January.

A lot of people can take one or two numbers and make a whole speech.

I’m not really interested in that. As the saying goes, numbers, unless they’re the squishy variety, can usually speak for themselves.

Maybe I should have a job that involves numbers more than words.

Of course, I would need Sam to back me up. I like hard numbers, not hard math.