use strict; use warnings; use feature 'say';

my @col9 = map { (split)[8] } <DATA>;

foreach my $test ( 1, 9, 42, 666 ) {
    my $count = scalar grep { $_ >= $test } @col9;
    say sprintf "%d values were >= %d", $count, $test;
}

__DATA__
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8  9 10 11 12
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8  9 10 11 12
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8  9 10 11 12
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 42 10 11 12
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 42 10 11 12
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 42 10 11 12
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8  1 10 11 12